THG 

UNIYGRS1TY  Of  CALIFORNIA 
LIBRARY 


AS   WE   WERE   SAYING. 


V 


WE  IV ERE  SAYING 

T3Y  CHAS.  ^DUDLEY   WARNER 

WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  T1Y  HARRY 
WHITNEY  McVlCKAR.  AND  OTHERS 
PUBLISHED  'BY 

HARPER  &  'BROTHERS 

YORK  3VIDCCCXCI 


Copyright,  1891,  by   HARHER  &   BROTHERS 
.///  rights  reserved 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

ROSE  AND  CHRYSANTHEMUM 3 

THE  RED  BONNET n 

THE  LOSS  IN  CIVILIZATION 19 

SOCIAL  SCREAMING 27 

DOES  REFINEMENT  KILL  INDIVIDUALITY?     ...    37 

THE  DIRECTOIRE  GOWN 45 

THE  MYSTERY  OF  THE  SEX 53 

THE   CLOTHES   OF   FICTION 61 

THE   BROAD  A 71 

CHEWING  GUM 79 

WOMEN  IN  CONGRESS 89 

SHALL  WOMEN  PROPOSE? 97 

FROCKS  AND  THE  STAGE 107 

ALTRUISM 115 

SOCIAL  CLEARING-HOUSE 123 

THE   DINNER-TABLE   TALK 133 

NATURALIZATION 141 

ART  OF  GOVERNING 149 

LOVE  OF  DISPLAY 159 

VALUE  OF  THE  COMMONPLACE 167 

THE  BURDEN  OF  CHRISTMAS 175 

THE   RESPONSIBILITY  OF  WRITERS 183 

THE  CAP  AND  GOWN 193 

A  TENDENCY  OF  THE  AGE 203 

A  LOCOED  NOVELIST 211 


3 


ROSE   AND   CHRYSANTHEMUM. 


HE  Drawer  will  still  bet  on  the  rose. 
This  is  not  a  wager,  but  only  a  strong 
expression  of  opinion.  The  rose  will  win. 
It  does  not  look  so  now.  To  all  appear 
ances,  this  is  the  age  of  the  chrysanthe 
mum.  What  this  gaudy  flower  will  be, 
daily  expanding  and  varying  to  suit  the 
whim  of  fashion,  no  one  can  tell.  It  may 
be  made  to  bloom  like  the  cabbage;  it 
may  spread  out  like  an  umbrella — it  can 
never  be  large  enough  nor  showy  enough 
to  suit  us.  Undeniably  it  is  very  effec 
tive,  especially  in  masses  of  gorgeous  color. 
In  its  innumerable  shades  and  enlarging 
proportions,  it  is  a  triumph  of  the  gar 
dener.  It  is  a  rival  to  the  aniline  dyes 
and  to  the  marabout  feathers.  It  goes 
along  with  all  the  conceits  and  fantastic 
unrest  of  the  decorative  art.  Indeed,  but 


•"  •  '"for •the»clisebvery'o'f  the  capacities  of  the 
chrysanthemum,  modern  life  would  have 
experienced  a  fatal  hitch  in  its  develop 
ment.  It  helps  out  our  age  of  plush  with 
a  flame  of  color.  There  is  nothing  shame 
faced  or  retiring  about  it,  and  it  already 
takes  all  provinces  for  its  own.  One 
would  be  only  half  married — civilly,  and 
not  fashionably — without  a  chrysanthe 
mum  wedding;  and  it  lights  the  way  to 
the  tomb.  The  maiden  wears  a  bunch  of 
it  in  her  corsage  in  token  of  her  bloom 
ing  expectations,  and  the  young  man 
flaunts  it  on  his  coat  lapel  in  an  effort  to 
be  at  once  effective  and  in  the  mode. 
Young  love  that  used  to  express  its  timid 
desire  with  the  violet,  or,  in  its  ardor, 
with  the  carnation,  now  seeks  to  bring  its 
emotions  to  light  by  the  help  of  the 
chrysanthemum.  And  it  can  express 
every  shade  of  feeling,  from  the  rich  yel-. 
low  of  prosperous  wooing  to  the  brick- 
colored  weariness  of  life  that  is  hardly 
distinguishable  from  the  liver  complaint. 
It  is  a  little  stringy  for  a  boutonniere,  but 
it  fills  the  modern-trained  eye  as  no  other 
flower  can  fill  it.  We  used  to  say  that  a 


girl  was  as  sweet  as  a  rose ;  we  have  for 
gotten  that  language.  We  used  to  call 
those  tender  additions  to  society,  on  the 
eve  of  their  advent  into  that  world  which 
is  always  so  eager  to  receive  fresh  young 
life,  "rose-buds;"  we  say  now  simply 
"  buds,"  but  we  mean  chrysanthemum 
buds.  They  are  as  beautiful  as  ever ;  they 
excite  the  same  exquisite  interest ;  per 
haps  in  their  maiden  hearts  they  are  one 
or  another  variety  of  that  flower  which 
bears  such  a  sweet  perfume  in  all  litera 
ture;  but  can  it  make  no  difference  in 
character  whether  a  young  girl  comes  out 
into  the  garish  world  as  a  rose  or  as  a 
chrysanthemum  ?  Is  her  life  set  to  the 
note  of  display,  of  color  and  show,  with 
little  sweetness,  or  to  that  retiring  mod 
esty  which  needs  a  little  encouragement 
before  it  fully  reveals  its  beauty  and  its 
perfume  ?  If  one  were  to  pass  his  life  in 
moving  in  a  palace  car  from  one  plush 
hotel  to  another,  a  bunch  of  chrysanthe 
mums  in  his  hand  would  seem  to  be  a 
good  symbol  of  his  life.  There  are  aged 
people  who  can  remember  that  they  used 
to  choose  various  roses,  as  to  their  color, 


odor,  and  degree  of  unfolding,  to  express 
the  delicate  shades  of  advancing  passion 
and  of  devotion.  What  can  one  do  with 
this  new  favorite  ?  Is  not  a  bunch  of 
chrysanthemums  a  sort  of  take-it-or- 
leave-it  declaration,  boldly  and  showily 
made,  an  offer  without  discrimination,  a 
tender  without  romance?  A  young  man 
will  catch  the  whole  family  with  this  flam 
ing  message,  but  where  is  that  sentiment 
that  once  set  the  maiden  heart  in  a  flut 
ter?  Will  she  press  a  chrysanthemum, 
and  keep  it  till  the  faint  perfume  reminds 
her  of  the  sweetest  moment  of  her  life  ? 

Are  we  exaggerating  this  astonish 
ing  rise,  development,  and  spread  of  the 
chrysanthemum  ?  As  a  fashion  it  is  not 
so  extraordinary  as  the  hoop-skirt,  or  as 
the  neck  ruff,  which  is  again  rising  as  a 
background  to  the  lovely  head.  But  the 
remarkable  thing  about  it  is  that  hereto 
fore  in  all  nations  and  times,  and  in  all 
changes  of  fashion  in  dress,  the  rose  has 
held  its  own  as  the  queen  of  flowers  and 
as  the  finest  expression  of  sentiment. 
But  here  comes  a  flaunting  thing  with  no 
desirable  perfume,  looking  as  if  it  were 


cut  with  scissors  out  of  tissue-paper,  but 
capable  of  taking  infinite  varieties  of  col 
or,  and  growing  as  big  as  a  curtain  tassel, 
that  literally  captures  the  world,  and 
spreads  all  over  the  globe,  like  the  Can 
ada  thistle.  The  florists  have  no  eye  for 
anything  else,  and  the  biggest  floral  prizes 
are  awarded  for  the  production  of  its  ec 
centricities.  Is  the  rage  for  this  flower 
typical  of  this  fast  and  flaring  age  ? 

The  Drawer  is  not  an  enemy  to  the 
chrysanthemum,  nor  to  the  sunflower,  nor 
to  any  other  gorgeous  production  of  nat 
ure.  But  it  has  an  old-fashioned  love  for 
the  modest  and  unobtrusive  virtues,  and 
an  abiding  faith  that  they  will  win  over 
the  strained  and  strident  displays  of  life. 
There  is  the  violet :  all  efforts  of  cultiva 
tion  fail  to  make  it  as  big  as  the  peony, 
and  it  would  be  no  more  dear  to  the  heart 
if  it  were  quadrupled  in  size.  We  do,  in 
deed,  know  that  satisfying  beauty  and  re 
finement  are  apt  to  escape  us  when  we 
strive  too  much  and  force  nature  into 
extraordinary  display,  and  we  know  how 
difficult  it  is  to  get  mere  bigness  and 
show  without  vulgarity.  Cultivation  has 


its  limits.  After  we  have  produced  it, 
we  find  that  the  biggest  rose  even  is  not 
the  most  precious;  and  lovely  as  woman 
is,  we  instinctively  in  our  admiration 
put  a  limit  to  her  size.  There  being, 
then,  certain  laws  that  ultimately  fetch  us 
all  up  standing,  so  to  speak,  it  does  seem 
probable  that  the  chrysanthemum  rage 
will  end  in  a  gorgeous  sunset  of  its  splen 
dor  ;  that  fashion  will  tire  of  it,  and  that 
the  rose,  with  its  secret^  heart  of  love ; 
the  rose,  with  its  exquisite  form  ;  the  rose, 
with  its  capacity  of  shyly  and  reluctantly 
unfolding  its  beauty ;  the  rose,  with  that 
odor — of  the  first  garden  exhaled  and  yet 
kept  down  through  all  the  ages  of  sin- 
will  become  again  the  fashion,  and  be 
more  passionately  admired  for  its  tempo 
rary  banishment.  Perhaps  the  poet  will 
then  come  back  again  and  sing.  What 
poet  could  now  sing  of  the  "awful  chrys 
anthemum  of  dawn  ?" 


THE    RED    BONNET. 


HE  Drawer  has  no 
•wish  to  make  Lent 
easier  for  anybody, 
or  rather  to  dimin 
ish  the  benefit  of  the 
penitential  season.  But  in  this  period 
of  human  anxiety  and  repentance  it  must 
be  said  that  not  enough  account  is  made 
of  the  moral  responsibility  of  Things. 
The  doctrine  is  sound ;  the  only  dif 
ficulty  is  in  applying  it.  It  can,  how 
ever,  be  illustrated  by  a  little  story,  which 
is  here  confided  to  the  reader  in  the  same 
trust  in  which  it  was  received.  There 
was  once  a  lady,  sober  in  mind  and  sedate 
in  manner,  whose  plain  dress  exactly  rep 
resented  her  desire  to  be  inconspicuous, 
to  do  good,  to  improve  every  day  of  her 
life  in  actions  that  should  benefit  her 


kind.  She  was  a  serious  person,  inclined 
to  improving  conversation,  to  the  read 
ing  of  bound  books  that  cost  at  least  a 
dollar  and  a  half  (fifteen  cents  of  which 
she  gladly  contributed  to  the  author),  and 
she  had  a  distaste  for  the  gay  society 
which  was  mainly  a  flutter  of  ribbons  and 
talk  and  pretty  faces ;  and  when  she  med 
itated,  as  she  did  in  her  spare  moments, 
her  heart  was  sore  over  the  frivolity  of 
life  and  the  emptiness  of  fashion.  She 
longed  to  make  the  world  better,  and 
without  any  priggishness  she  set  it  an  ex- 
ample  of  simplicity  and  sobriety,  of  cheer 
ful  acquiescence  in  plainness  and  incon- 
spicuousness. 

One  day — it  was  in  the  autumn — this 
lady  had  occasion  to  buy  a  new  hat. 
From  a  great  number  offered  to  her  she 
selected  a  red  one  with  a  dull  red  plume. 
It  did  not  agree  with  the  rest  of  her  ap 
parel  ;  it  did  not  fit  her  apparent  charac 
ter.  What  impulse  led  to  this  selection 
she  could  not  explain.  She  was  not  tired 
of  being  good,  but  something  in  the 
jauntiness  of  the  hat  and  the  color 
pleased  her.  If  it  were  a  temptation,  she 


did  not  intend  to  yield  to  it,  but  she 
thought  she  would  take  the  hat  home 
and  try  it.  Perhaps  her  nature  felt  the 
need  of  a  little  warmth.  The  hat  pleased 
her  still  more  when  she  got  it  home  and 
put  it  on  and  surveyed  herself  in  the  mir 
ror.  Indeed,  there  was  a  new  expression 
in  her  face  that  corresponded  to  the  hat. 
She  put  it  off  and  looked  at  it.  There 
was  something  almost  humanly  winning 
and  temptatious  in  it.  In  short,  she  kept 
it,  and  when  she  wore  it  abroad  she  was 
not  conscious  of  its  incongruity  to  her 
self  or  to  her  dress,  but  of  the  incongru 
ity  of  the  rest  of  her  apparel  to  the  hat, 
which  seemed  to  have  a  sort  of  intelli 
gence  of  its  own,  at  least  a  power  of 
changing  and  conforming  things  to  it 
self.  By  degrees  one  article  after  an 
other  in  the  lady's  wardrobe  was  laid 
aside,  and  another  substituted  for  it  that 
answered  to  the  demanding  spirit  of  the 
hat.  In  a  little  while  this  plain  lady  was 
not  plain  any  more,  but  most  gorgeously 
dressed,  and  possessed  with  the  desire  to 
be  in  the  height  of  the  fashion.  It  came 
to  this,  that  she  had  a  tea  gown  made  out 


of  a  window- curtain  with  a  flamboyant 
pattern.  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  would 
have  been  ashamed  of  himself  in  her 
presence. 

But  this  was  not  all.  Her  disposition, 
her  ideas,  her  whole  life,  were  changed. 
She  did  not  any  more  think  of  going 
about  doing  good,  but  of  amusing  her 
self.  She  read  nothing  but  stories  in 
paper  covers.  In  place  of  being  sedate 
and  sober-minded,  she  was  frivolous  to 
excess;  she  spent  most  of  her  time  with 
women  who  liked  to  "  frivol."  She  kept 
Lent  in  the  most  expensive  way,  so  as  to 
make  the  impression  upon  everybody  that 
she  was  better  than  the  extremest  kind 
of  Lent.  From  liking  the  sedatest  com 
pany  she  passed  to  liking  the  gayest  so 
ciety  and  the  most  fashionable  method 
of  getting  rid  of  her  time.  Nothing  what 
ever  bad  happened  to  her,  and  she  is  now 
an  ornament  to  society. 

This  story  is  not  an  invention ;  it  is  a 
leaf  out  of  life.  If  this  lady  that  autumn 
day  had  bought  a  plain  bonnet  she  would 
have  continued  on  in  her  humble,  sensible 
way  of  living.  Clearly  it  was  the  hat  that 


made  the  woman,  and  not  the  woman  the 
hat.  She  had  no  preconception  of  it ;  it 
simply  happened  to  her,  like  any  accident 
— as  if  she  had  fallen  and  sprained  her 
ankle.  Some  people  may  say  that  she 
had  in  her  a  concealed  propensity  for 
frivolity ;  but  the  hat  cannot  escape  the 
moral  responsibility  of  calling  it  out  if  it 
really  existed.  The  power  of  things  to 
change  and  create  character  is  well  at 
tested.  Men  live  up  to  or  live  down  to 
their  clothes,  which  have  a  great  moral 
influence  on  manner,  and  even  on  con 
duct.  There  was  a  man  run  down  almost 
to  vagabondage,  owing  to  his  increasing 
ly  shabby  clothing,  and  he  was  only  saved 
from  becoming  a  moral  and  physical  wreck 
by  a  remnant  of  good -breeding  in  him 
that  kept  his  worn  boots  well  polished. 
In  time  his  boots  brought  up  the  rest  of 
his  apparel  and  set  him  on  his  feet  again. 
Then  there  is  the  well-known  example  of 
the  honest  clerk  on  a  small  salary  who 
was  ruined  by  the  gift  of  a  repeating 
watch — an  expensive  time-piece  that  re 
quired  at  least  ten  thousand  a  year  to  sus 
tain  it :  he  is  now  in  Canada. 


Sometimes  the  influence  of  Things  is 
good  and  sometimes  it  is  bad.  We  need 
a  philosophy  that  shall  tell  us  why  it  is 
one  or  the  other,  and  fix  the  responsibil 
ity  where  it  belongs.  It  does  no  good,  as 
people  always  find  out  by  reflex  action,  to 
kick  an  inanimate  thing  that  has  offend 
ed,  to  smash  a  perverse  watch  with  a  ham 
mer,  to  break  a  rocking-chair  that  has  a 
habit  of  tipping  over  backward.  If  Things 
are  not  actually  malicious,  they  seem  to 
have  a  power  of  revenging  themselves. 
We  ought  to  try  to  understand  them  bet 
ter,  and  to  be  more  aware  of  what  they 
can  do  to  us.  If  the  lady  who  bought  the 
red  hat  could  have  known  the  hidden  nat 
ure  of  it,  could  have  had  a  vision  of  her 
self  as  she  was  transformed  by  it,  she 
would  as  soon  have  taken  a  viper  into 
her  bosom  as  have  placed  the  red  tempt 
er  on  her  head.  Her  whole  previous  life, 
her  feeling  of  the  moment,  show  that  it 
was  not  vanity  that  changed  her, 

but  the  inconsider  ^.f  ate  association 
with  a  Thing  that  £i  happened  to  strike 
her  fancy,  and  wh  'jp  ich  seemed  inno 
cent.  But  no  Th  WJ  ing  is  really  pow 
erless  for  good  or  JK  evil. 


THE    LOSS    IN    CIVILIZATION. 


AVE  we  yet  hit 
upon  the  right 
idea  of  civiliza 
tion  ?  The  proc 
ess  which  has 
been  going  on  ever  since  the 
world  began  seems  to  have  a  de 
fect  in  it ;  strength,  vital  power,  somehow 
escapes.  When  you've  got  a  man  thor 
oughly  civilized  you  cannot  do  anything 
more  with  him.  And  it  is  worth  reflec 
tion  what  we  should  do,  what  could  we 
spend  our  energies  on,  and  what  would 


evoke  them,  we  who  are  both  civilized 
and  enlightened,  if  all  nations  were  civ 
ilized  and  the  earth  were  entirely  sub 
dued.  That  is  to  say,  are  not  barbarism 
and  vast  regions  of  uncultivated  land  a 
necessity  of  healthful  life  on  this  globe  ? 
We  do  not  like  to  admit  that  this  process 
has  its  cycles,  that  nations  and  men,  like 
trees  and  fruit,  grow,  ripen,  and  then  de 
cay.  The  world  has  always  had  a  con 
ceit  that  the  globe  could  be  made  entire 
ly  habitable,  and  all  over  the  home  of  a 
society  constantly  growing  better.  In  or 
der  to  accomplish  this  we  have  striven  to 
eliminate  barbarism  in  man  and  in  nature. 
Is  there  anything  more  unsatisfactory 
than  a  perfect  house,  perfect  grounds, 
perfect  gardens,  art  and  nature  brought 
into  the  most  absolute  harmony  of  taste 
and  culture  ?  What  more  can  a  man  do 
with  it  ?  What  satisfaction  has  a  man  in 
it  if  he  really  gets  to  the  end  of  his  power 
to  improve  it  ?  There  have  been  such 
nearly  ideal  places,  and  how  strong  nat 
ure,  always  working  against  man  and  in 
the  interest  of  untamed  wildness,  likes  to 
riot  in  them  and  reduce  them  to  pictu- 


resque  destruction  !  And  what  sweet  sad 
ness,  pathos,  romantic  suggestion,  the 
human  mind  finds  in  such  a  ruin  !  And 
a  society  that  has  attained  its  end  in  all 
possible  culture,  entire  refinement  in  man 
ners,  in  tastes,  in  the  art  of  elegant  intel 
lectual  and  luxurious  living  —  is  there 
nothing  pathetic  in  that  ?  Where  is  the 
primeval,  heroic  force  that  made  the  joy 
of  living  in  the  rough  old  uncivilized 
days?  Even  throw  in  goodness,  a  cer 
tain  amount  of  altruism,  gentleness,  warm 
interest  in  unfortunate  humanity — is  the 
situation  much  improved  ?  London  is 
probably  the  most  civilized  centre  the 
world  has  ever  seen ;  there  are  gathered 
more  of  the  elements  of  that  which  we 
reckon  the  best.  Where  in  history,  unless 
some  one  puts  in  a  claim  for  the  French 
man,  shall  we  find  a  Man  so  nearly  ap 
proaching  the  standard  we  have  set  up 
of  civilization  as  the  Englishman,  refined 
by  inheritance  and  tradition,  educated 
almost  beyond  the  disturbance  of  enthu 
siasm,  and  cultivated  beyond  the  chance 
of  surprise  ?  We  are  speaking  of  the  high 
est  type  in  manner,  information,  training, 


in  the  acquisition  of  what  the  world  has 
to  give.  Could  these  men  have  con 
quered  the  world  ?  Is  it  possible  that 
our  highest  civilization  has  lost  some 
thing  of  the  rough  and  admirable  ele 
ment  that  we  admire  in  the  heroes  of 
Homer  and  of  Elizabeth  ?  What  is  this 
London,  the  most  civilized  city  ever 
known  ?  Why,  a  considerable  part  of 
its  population  is  more  barbarous,  more 
hopelessly  barbarous,  than  any  wild  race 
we  know,  because  they  are  the  barbarians 
of  civilization,  the  refuse  and  slag  of  it,  if 
we  dare  say  that  of  any  humanity.  More 
hopeless,  because  the  virility  of  savagery 
has  measurably  gone  out  of  it.  We  can 
do  something  with  a  degraded  race  of 
savages,  if  it  has  any  stamina  in  it.  What 
can  be  done  with  those  who  are  described 
as  "  East-Londoners  ?" 

Every  great  city  has  enough  of  the  same 
element.  Is  this  an  accident,  or  is  it  a 
necessity  of  the  refinement  that  we  insist 
on  calling  civilization  ?  We  are  always 
sending  out  missionaries  to  savage  or 
perverted  nations,  we  are  always  sending 
out  emigrants  to  occupy  and  reduce  to 


23 

order  neglected  territory.  This  is  our 
main  business.  How  would  it  be  if  this 
business  were  really  accomplished,  and 
there  were  no  more  peoples  to  teach 
our  way  of  life  to,  and  no  more  territory 
to  bring  under  productive  cultivation? 
Without  the  necessity  of  putting  forth 
this  energy,  a  survival  of  the  original 
force  in  man,  how  long  would  our  civili 
zation  last  ?  In  a  word,  if  the  world  were 
actually  all  civilized,  wouldn't  it  be  too 
weak  even  to  ripen  ?  And  now,  in  the 
great  centres,  where  is  accumulated  most 
of  that  we  value  as  the  product  of  man's 
best  efforts,  is  there  strength  enough  to 
elevate  the  degraded  humanity  that  at 
tends  our  highest  cultivation  ?  We  have 
a  gay  confidence  that  we  can  do  some 
thing  for  Africa.  Can  we  reform  London 
and  Paris  and  New  York,  which  our  own 
hands  have  made  ? 

If  we  cannot,  where  is  the  difficulty? 
Is  this  a  hopeless  world  ?  Must  it  always 
go  on  by  spurts  and  relapses,  alternate  civ 
ilization  and  barbarism,  and  the  barba 
rism  being  necessary  to  keep  us  employed 
and  growing?  Or  is  there  some  mistake 


24 

about  our  ideal  of  civilization  ?  Does 
our  process  too  much  eliminate  the  rough 
vigor,  courage,  stamina  of  the  race  ?  After 
a  time  do  we  just  live,  or  try  to  live,  on 
literature  warmed  over,  on  pretty  color 
ing  and  drawing  instead  of  painting  that 
stirs  the  soul  to  the  heroic  facts  and 
tragedies  of  life  ?  Where  did  this  virile, 
blood-full,  throbbing  Russian  literature 
come  from ;  this  Russian  painting  of 
Verestchagin,  that  smites  us  like  a  sword 
with  the  consciousness  of  the  tremendous 
meaning  of  existence?  Is  there  a  bar 
baric  force  left  in  the  world  that  we  have 
been  daintily  trying  to  cover  and  apologize 
for  and  refine  into  gentle  agreeableness  ? 

These  questions  are  too  deep  for  these 
pages.  Let  us  make  the  world  pleasant, 
and  throw  a  cover  over  the  refuse.  We 
are  doing  very  well,  on  the  whole,  con 
sidering  what  we  are  and  the  materials 
we  have  to  work  on.  And  we  must  not 
leave  the  world  so  perfectly  civilized  that 
the  inhabitants,  two  or  three  centuries 
ahead,  will  have  nothing  to  do. 


SOCIAL   SCREAMING. 


F  all  the  contrivances  for 
amusement  in  this  agreeable 
world  the  "  Reception  "  is  the  most  in 
genious,  and  would  probably  most  excite 
the  wonder  of  an  angel  sent  down  to  in 
spect  our  social  life.  If  he  should  pause 
at  the  entrance  of  the  house  where  one  is 
in  progress,  he  would  be  puzzled.  The 
noise  that  would  greet  his  ears  is  differ 
ent  from  the  deep  continuous  roar  in  the 
streets,  it  is  unlike  the  hum  of  millions  of 
seventeen-year  locusts,  it  wants  the  mu 
sical  quality  of  the  spring  conventions  of 
the  blackbirds  in  the  chestnuts,  and  he 
could  not  compare  it  to  the  vociferation 
in  a  lunatic  asylum,  for  that  is  really  sub 
dued  and  infrequent.  He  might  be  inca- 


pable  of  analyzing  this,  but  when  he 
caught  sight  of  the  company  he  would  be 
compelled  to  recognize  it  as  the  noise  of 
our  highest  civilization.  It  may  not  be 
perfect,  for  there  are  limits  to  human 
powers  of  endurance,  but  it  is  the  best  we 
can  do.  It  is  not  a  chance  affair.  Here 
are  selected,  picked  out  by  special  invita 
tion,  the  best  that  society  can  show,  the 
most  intelligent,  the  most  accomplished, 
the  most  beautiful,  the  best  dressed  per 
sons  in  the  community — all  receptions 
have  this  character.  The  angel  would 
notice  this  at  once,  and  he  would  be  as 
tonished  at  the  number  of  such  persons, 
for  the  rooms  would  be  so  crowded  that 
he  would  see  the  hopelessness  of  attempt 
ing  to  edge  or  wedge  his  way  through  the 
throng  without  tearing  off  his  wings.  An 
angel,  in  short,  would  stand  no  chance  in 
one  of  these  brilliant  assemblies  on  ac 
count  of  his  wings,  and  he  probably  could 
not  be  heard,  on  account  of  the  low,  heav 
enly  pitch  of  his  voice.  His  inference 
would  be  that  these  people  had  been  se 
lected  to  come  together  by  reason  of  their 
superior  power  of  screaming.  He  would 


29 

be  wrong.  They  are  selected  on  account 
of  their  intelligence,  agreeableness,  and 
power  of  entertaining  each  other.  They 
come  together,  not  for  exercise,  but  pleas 
ure,  and  the  more  they  crowd  and  jam 
and  struggle,  and  the  louder  they  scream, 
the  greater  the  pleasure.  It  is  a  kind  of 
contest,  full  of  good  -  humor  and  excite 
ment.  The  one  that  has  the  shrillest 
voice  and  can  scream  the  loudest  is  most 
successful.  It  would  seem  at  first  that 
they  are  under  a  singular  hallucination, 
imagining  that  the  more  noise  there  is  in 
the  room  the  better  each  one  can  be  heard, 
and  so  each  one  continues  to  raise  his  or 
her  voice  in  order  to  drown  the  other 
voices.  The  secret  of  the  game  is  to  pitch 
the  voice  one  or  two  octaves  above  the 
ordinary  tone.  Some  throats  cannot 
stand  this  strain  long ; they  become  rasp 
ed  and  sore,  and  the  voices  break ;  but 
this  adds  to  the  excitement  and  enjoy 
ment  of  those  who  can  scream  with  less 
inconvenience.  The  angel  would  notice 
that  if  at  any  time  silence  was  called,  in 
order  that  an  announcement  of  music 
could  be  made,  in  the  awful  hush  that  fol- 


lowed  people  spoke  to  each  other  in  their 
natural  voices,  and  everybody  could  be 
heard  without  effort.  But  this  was  not 
the  object  of  the  Reception,  and  in  a  mo 
ment  more  the  screaming  would  begin 
again,  the  voices  growing  higher  and  high 
er,  until,  if  the  roof  were  taken  off,  one 
vast  shriek  would  go  up  to  heaven. 

This  is  not  only  a  fashion,  it  is  an  art. 
People  have  to  train  for  it,  and  as  it  is  a 
unique  amusement,  it  is  worth  some  trou 
ble  to  be  able  to  succeed  in  it.  Men,  by 
reason  of  their  stolidity  and  deeper  voices, 
can  never  be  proficients  in  it ;  and  they 
do  not  have  so  much  practice — unless 
they  are  stock  -  brokers.  Ladies  keep 
themselves  in  training  in  their  ordinary 
calls.  If  three  or  four  meet  in  a  drawing- 
room  they  all  begin  to  scream,  not  that 
they  may  be  heard — for  the  higher  they 
go  the  less  they  understand  each  other — 
but  simply  to  acquire  the  art  of  scream 
ing  at  receptions.  If  half  a  dozen  ladies 
meeting  by  chance  in  a  parlor  should  con 
verse  quietly  in  their  sweet,  ordinary  home 
tones,  it  might  be  in  a  certain  sense  agree 
able,  but  it  would  not  be  fashionable,  and 


it  would  not  strike  the  prevailing  note  of 
our  civilization.  If  it  were  true  that  a 
group  of  women  all  like  to  talk  at  the 
same  time  when  they  meet  (which  is  a 
slander  invented  by  men,  who  may  be  just 
as  loquacious,  but  not  so  limber-tongued 
and  quick-witted), and  raise  their  voices 
to  a  shriek  in  order  to  dominate  each 
other,  it  could  be  demonstrated  that  they 
would  be  more  readily  heard  if  they  all 
spoke  in  low  tones.  But  the  object  is 
not  conversation ;  it  is  the  social  exhila 
ration  that  comes  from  the  wild  exercise 
of  the  voice  in  working  off  a  nervous  en 
ergy  ;  it  is  so  seldom  that  in  her  own  house 
a  lady  gets  a  chance  to  scream. 

The  dinner-party,  where  there  are  ten 
or  twelve  at  table,  is  a  favorite  chance  for 
this  exercise.  At  a  recent  dinner,  where 
there  were  a  dozen  uncommonly  intelli 
gent  people,  all  capable  of  the  most  enter 
taining  conversation,  by  some  chance,  or 
owing  to  some  nervous  condition,  they  all 
began  to  speak  in  a  high  voice  as  soon  as 
they  were  seated,  and  the  effect  was  that 
of  a  dynamite  explosion.  It  was  a  cheer 
ful  babel  of  indistinguishable  noise,  so 


32 

loud  and  shrill  and  continuous  that  it  was 
absolutely  impossible  for  two  people  seat 
ed  on  the  opposite  sides  of  the  table,  and 
both  shouting  at  each  other,  to  catch  an 
intelligible  sentence.  This  made  a  lively 
dinner.  Everybody  was  animated,  and  if 
there  was  no  conversation,  even  between 
persons  seated  side  by  side,  there  was  a 
glorious  clatter  and  roar;  and  when  it 
was  over,  everybody  was  hoarse  and  ex 
hausted,  and  conscious  that  he  had  done 
his  best  in  a  high  social  function. 

This  topic  is  not  the  selection  of  the 
Drawer,  the  province  of  which  is  to  note, 
but  not  to  criticise,  the  higher  civilization. 
But  the  inquiry  has  come  from  many 
cities,  from  many  women,  "Cannot  some 
thing  be  done  to  stop  social  screaming?" 
The  question  is  referred  to  the  scientific 
branch  of  the  Social  Science  Association. 
If  it  is  a  mere  fashion,  the  association  can 
do  nothing.  But  it  might  institute  some 
practical  experiments.  It  might  get  to 
gether  in  a  small  room  fifty  people  all  let 
loose  in  the  ordinary  screaming  contest, 
measure  the  total  volume  of  noise  and 
divide  it  by  fifty,  and  ascertain  how  much 


33 

throat  power  was  needed  in  one  person  to 
be  audible  to  another  three  feet  from  the 
latter's  ear.  This  would  sift  out  the  per 
sons  fit  for  such  a  contest.  The  investi 
gator  might  then  call  a  dead  silence  in 
the  assembly,  and  request  each  person  to 
talk  in  a  natural  voice,  then  divide  the 
total  noise  as  before,  and  see  what  chance 
of  being  heard  an  ordinary  individual  had 
in  it.  If  it  turned  out  in  these  circum 
stances  that  every  person  present  could 
speak  with  ease  and  hear  perfectly  what 
was  said,  then  the  order  might  be  given 
for  the  talk  to  go  on  in  that  tone,  and  that 
every  person  who  raised  the  voice  and  be 
gan  to  scream  should  be  gagged  and  re 
moved  to  another  room.  In  this  room 
could  be  collected  all  the  screamers  to 
enjoy  their  own  powers.  The  same  ex 
periment  might  be  tried  at  a  dinner-party, 
namely,  to  ascertain  if  the  total  hum  of 
low  voices  in  the  natural  key  would  not 
be  less  for  the  individual  voice  to  over 
come  than  the  total  scream  of  all  the 
voices  raised  to  a  shriek.  If  scientific  re 
search  demonstrated  the  feasibility  of 
speaking  in  an  ordinary  voice  at  recep- 


34 

tions,  dinner-parties,  and  in  "calls,"  then 
the  Drawer  is  of  opinion  that  intelligible 
and  enjoyable  conversation  would  be  pos 
sible  on  these  occasions,  if  it  becomes 
fashionable  not  to  scream. 


DOES    REFINEMENT    KILL 
INDIVIDUALITY? 


S  it  true  that  cultivation,  what  we  call 
refinement,  kills  individuality?  Or, 
worse  than  that  even,  that  one  loses  his 
taste  by  overcultivation  ?  Those  persons 
are  uninteresting,  certainly,  who  have  gone 
so  far  in  culture  that  they  accept  con 
ventional  standards  supposed  to  be  cor 
rect,  to  which  they  refer  everything,  and 
by  which  they  measure  everybody.  Taste 
usually  implies  a  sort  of  selection ;  the 
cultivated  taste  of  which  we  speak  is  mere 
ly  a  comparison,  no  longer  an  individual 
preference  or  appreciation,  but  only  a  re 
ference  to  the  conventional  and  accepted 
standard.  When  a  man  or  woman  has 
reached  this  stage  of  propriety  we  are 
never  curious  any  more  concerning  their 


opinions  on  any  subject.  We  know  that 
the  opinions  expressed  will  not  be  theirs, 
evolved  out  of  their  own  feeling,  but  that 
they  will  be  the  cut-and-dried  results  of 
conventionality. 

It  is  doubtless  a  great  comfort  to  a  per 
son  to  know  exactly  how  to  feel  and  what 
to  say  in  every  new  contingency,  but 
whether  the  zest  of  life  is  not  dulled  by 
this  ability  is  a  grave  question,  for  it  leaves 
no  room  for  surprise  and  little  for  emo 
tion.  O  ye  belles  of  Newport  and  of  Bar 
Harbor,  in  your  correct  and  conventional 
agreement  of  what  is  proper  and  agree 
able,  are  you  wasting  your  sweet  lives  by 
rule  ?  Is  your  compact,  graceful,  orderly 
society  liable  to  be  monotonous  in  its 
gay  repetition  of  the  same  thing  week 
after  week  ?  Is  there  nothing  outside  of 
that  envied  circle  which  you  make  so 
brilliant  ?  Is  the  Atlantic  shore  the  only 
coast  where  beauty  may  lounge  and  spread 
its  net  of  enchantment?  The  Atlantic 
shore  and  Europe  ?  Perhaps  on  the  Pa 
cific  you  might  come  back  to  your  origi 
nal  selves,  and  find  again  that  freedom 
and  that  charm  of  individuality  that  are 


39 

so  attractive.  Some  sparkling  summer 
morning,  if  you  chanced  to  drive  four-in- 
hand  along  the  broad  beach  at  Santa 
Barbara,  inhaling  the  spicy  breeze  from 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  along  the  curved 
shore  where  the  blue  of  the  sea  and  the 
purple  of  the  mountains  remind  you  of 
the  Sorrentine  promontory,  and  then 
dashed  away  into  the  canon  of  Monte- 
cito,  among  the  vineyards  and  orange  or 
chards  and  live-oaks  and  palms,  in  vales 
and  hills  all  ablaze  with  roses  and  flowers 
of  the  garden  and  the  hot  -  house,  which 
bloom  the  year  round  in  the  gracious  sea- 
air,  would  you  not,  we  wonder,  come  to 
yourselves  in  the  sense  of  a  new  life  where 
it  is  good  form  to  be  enthusiastic  and  not 
disgraceful  to  be  surprised  ?  It  is  a  far 
cry  from  Newport  to  Santa  Barbara,  and 
a  whole  world  of  new  sensations  lies  on 
the  way,  experiences  for  which  you  will 
have  no  formula  of  experience.  To  take 
the  journey  is  perhaps  too  heroic  treat 
ment  for  the  disease  of  conformity — the 
sort  of  malaria  of  our  exclusive  civiliza 
tion. 

The  Drawer  is  not  urging  this  journey, 


4o 

nor  any  break  -  up  of  the  social  order,  for 
it  knows  how  painful  a  return  to  individ 
uality  may  be.  It  is  easier  to  go  on  in 
the  subordination  of  one's  personality  to 
the  strictly  conventional  life.  It  expects 
rather  to  record  a  continually  perfected 
machinery,  a  life  in  which  not  only  speech 
but  ideas  are  brought  into  rule.  We  have 
had  something  to  say  occasionally  of  the 
art  of  conversation,  which  is  in  danger 
of  being  lost  in  the  confused  babel  of  the 
reception  and  the  chatter  of  the  dinner 
party — the  art  of  listening  and  the  art  of 
talking  both  being  lost.  Society  is  tak 
ing  alarm  at  this,  and  the  women  as  usual 
are  leaders  in  a  reform.  Already,  by  rea 
son  of  clubs — literary,  scientific,  economic 
— woman  is  the  well-informed  part  of  our 
society.  In  the  "  Conversation  Lunch  " 
this  information  is  now  brought  into  use. 
The  lunch,  and  perhaps  the  dinner,  will 
no  longer  be  the  occasion  of  satisfying 
the  appetite  or  of  gossip,-  but  of  improv 
ing  talk.  The  giver  of  the  lunch  will  fur 
nish  the  topic  of  conversation.  Two  per 
sons  may  not  speak  at  once  ;  two  persons 
may  not  talk  with  each  other ;  all  talk  is 


to  be  general  and  on  the  topic  assigned, 
and  while  one  is  speaking,  the  others 
must  listen.  Perhaps  each  lady  on  tak 
ing  her  seat  may  find  in  her  napkin  a 
written  slip  of  paper  which  shall  be  the 
guide  to  her  remarks.  Thus  no  time  is 
to  be  wasted  on  frivolous  topics.  The  or 
dinary  natural  flow  of  rejoinder  and  rep 
artee,  the  swirling  of  talk  around  one 
obstacle  and  another,  its  winding  and  rip 
pling  here  and  there  as  individual  whim 
suggests,  will  not  be  allowed,  but  all  will 
be  improving,  and  tend  to  that  general 
culture  of  which  we  have  been  speaking. 
The  ladies'  lunch  is  not  to  be  exactly  a 
debating  society,  but  an  open  occasion 
for  the  delivery  of  matured  thought  and 
the  acquisition  of  information.  The  ob 
ject  is  not  to  talk  each  other  down,  but 
to  improve  the  mind,  which,  unguided,  is 
apt  to  get  frivolous  at  the  convivial  board. 
It  is  notorious  that  men  by  themselves 
at  lunch  or  dinner  usually  shun  grave  top 
ics  and  indulge  in  persiflage,  and  even  de 
scend  to  talk  about  wine  and  the  made 
dishes.  The  women's  lunch  of  this  sum 
mer  takes  higher  ground.  It  will  give 


Mr.  Browning  his  final  estimate ;  it  will 
settle  Mr.  Ibsen  ;  it  will  determine  the 
suffrage  question  ;  it  will  adjudicate  be 
tween  the  total  abstainers  and  the  half 
way  covenant  of  high  license  ;  it  will  not 
hesitate  to  cut  down  the  tariff. 

The  Drawer  anticipates  a  period  of  re 
pose  in  all  our  feverish  social  life.  We 
shall  live  more  by  rule  and  less  by  impulse. 
When  we  meet  we  shall  talk  on  set  top 
ics,  determined  beforehand.  By  this  con 
centration  we  shall  be  able  as  one  man  or 
one  woman  to  reach  the  human  limit  of 
cultivation,  and  get  rid  of  all  the  aberra 
tions  of  individual  assertion  and  feeling. 
By  studying  together  in  clubs,  by  con 
versing  in  monotone  and  by  rule,  by  think 
ing  the  same  things  and  exchanging  ideas 
until  we  have  none  left,  we  shall  come 
into  that  social  placidity  which  is  one 
dream  of  the  nationalists — one  long  step 
towards  what  may  be  called  a  prairie  men 
tal  condition — the  slope  of  Kansas,  where 
those  who  are  five  thousand  feet  above 
the  sea -level  seem  to  be  no  higher  than 
those  who  dwell  in  the  Missouri  Valley. 


THE   DIRECTOIRE   GOWN. 


\ 


E  are  all  more  or  less  devoted 
^-^  to  liberty  JgalitJ,  and  consider- 
^j  able  fratcrnit^,  and  we  have  va- 
<^  rious  ways  of  showing  it.  It  is  the 
M.}  opinion  of  many  that  women  do  not 
care  much  about  politics,  and 
that  if  they  are  interested  at 
all  in  them,  they  are  by  nature 
aristocrats.  It  is  said,  indeed,  that  they 
care  much  more  about  their  dress  than 
they  do  about  the  laws  or  the  form  of 
government.  This  notion  arises  from  a 
misapprehension  both  of  the  nature  of 
woman  and  of  the  significance  of  dress. 

Men  have  an  idea  that  fashions  are 
hap-hazard,  and  are  dictated  and  guided 
by  no  fixed  principles  of  action,  and  rep 
resent  no  great  currents  in  politics  or 
movements  of  the  human  mind.  Worn- 


en,  who  are  exceedingly  subtle  in  all  their 
operations,  feel  that  it  is  otherwise.  They 
have  a  prescience  of  changes  in  the  drift 
of  public  affairs,  and  a  delicate  sensitive 
ness  that  causes  them  to  adjust  their  rai 
ment  to  express  these  changes.  Men 
have  written  a  great  deal  in  their  bung 
ling  way  about  the  philosophy  of  clothes. 
Women  exhibit  it,  and  if  we  should  study 
them  more  and  try  to  understand  them 
instead  of  ridiculing  their  fashions  as 
whims  bred  of  an  inconstant  mind  and 
mere  desire  for  change,  we  would  have  a 
better  apprehension  of  the  great  currents 
of  modern  political  life  and  society. 

Many  observers  are  puzzled  by  the 
gradual  and  insidious  return  recently  to 
the  mode  of  the  Directoire,  and  can  see 
in  it  no  significance  other  than  weariness 
of  some  other  mode.  We  need  to  recall 
the  fact  of  the  influence  of  the  centenary 
period  upon  the  human  mind.  It  is  near 
ly  a  century  since  the  fashion  of  the  Di 
rectoire.  What  more  natural,  consider 
ing  the  evidence  that  we  move  in  spirals, 
if  not  in  circles,  that  the  signs  of  the  an 
niversary  of  one  of  the  most  marked  pe- 


47 

riods  in  history  should  be  shown  in  fem 
inine  apparel?  It  is  woman's  way  of 
hinting  what  is  in  the  air,  the  spirit  that 
is  abroad  in  the  world.  It  will  be  re 
membered  that  women  took  a  prominent 
part  in  the  destruction  of  the  Bastile, 
helping,  indeed,  to  tear  down  that  odious 
structure  with  their  own  hands,  the  fall 
of  which.it  is  well  known,  brought  in  the 
classic  Greek  and  republican  simplicity, 
the  subtle  meaning  of  the  change  being 
expressed  in  French  gowns.  Naturally 
there  was  a  reaction  from  all  this  towards 
aristocratic  privileges  and  exclusiveness, 
which  went  on  for  many  years,  until  in 
France  monarchy  and  empire  followed 
the  significant  leadership  of  the  French 
modistes.  So  strong  was  this  that  it 
passed  to  other  countries,  and  in  England 
the  impulse  outlasted  even  the  Reform 
Bill,  and  skirts  grew  more  and  more  bul 
bous,  until  it  did  not  need  more  than  three 
or  four  women  to  make  a  good-sized  as 
sembly.  This  was  not  the  result  of  a 
whim  about  clothes,  but  a  subtle  recog 
nition  of  a  spirit  of  exclusiveness  and  de 
fence  abroad  in  the  world.  Each  woman 


became  IK  r  own  Bastile.  Men  surround- 
<d  it  ;ui(l  ihmideied  against  it  without 
lli'-  leail  elle.  I.  ll  '.eemed  as  peimanent 
.1  'It'-  Pyramids.  At  every  male  attack 
it  expand.  (|,  and  became  more  aggressive 
and  took  up  more  room.  Women  have 
such  an  exquisite  sense  of  things  —  just 
.1  ihev  hau-  now  in  regard  to  big  ob- 
striK  tivc  bat!  Hi  the  theatres.  They  know 
i  ha  i  m«.  i  ,  ,f  the  plays  are  inferior  and 
some  oi  tin-in  are  immoral,  and  they  at 
tend  the  theatres  unh  head  dresses  that 
will  prevent  as  many  people  ai  possible 
liom  seeing  the  stage  and  being  corrupt- 

•  1  by  anything  that  takes   place   on    it. 

I  hey  object  to  the  men  seeing  some  of 
the  women  who  are  now  on  the  it 
It  happened,  as  to  the  private  Hast  lies, 
that  the  women  at  last  recognized  a 
change  in  the  sociological  and  political 
atmosphere  of  the  world,  and  without 
«  onsiiliing  any  men  of  allairs  or  caring 

t"i  ill- ii  opinion,  down,  went  the  Bostilet. 

When  women  Attacked  them,  in  obedi- 
en<  <•  to  their  polili.  al  instill)  Is,  they  col 
lapsed  lik<-  piiiH  lined  balloons.  Natural 
woman  was  measurably  (that  is,  a  <  apa<  - 


ity  of  being  measured)  restored  to  the 
world.  And  we  all  remember  the  great 
political  revolutionary  movements  of  1848. 
Now  France  is  still  the  arbiter  of  the 
modes.  Say  what  we  may  about  Berlin, 
copy  their  fashion  plates  as  we  will,  or 
about  London,  or  New  York,  or  Tokio,  it 
is  indisputable  that  the  woman  in  any 
company  who  has  on  a  Paris  gown — the 
expression  is  odious,  but  there  is  no  other 
that  in  these  days  would  be  comprehend 
ed — "  takes  the  cake."  It  is  not  that  the 
women  care  for  this  as  a  mere  matter  of 
apparel.  But  they  are  sensitive  to  the 
political  atmosphere,  to  the  philosophical 
significance  that  it  has  to  great  impend 
ing  changes.  We  are  approaching  the 
centenary  of  the  fall  of  the  Bastile.  The 
French  have  no  Bastile  to  lay  low,  nor, 
indeed,  any  Tuileries  to  burn  up;  but 
perhaps  they  might  get  a  good  way  ahead 
by  demolishing  Notre  Dame  and  reducing 
most  of  Paris  to  ashes.  Apparently  they 
are  on  the  eve  of  doing  something.  The 
women  of  the  world  may  not  know  what 
it  is,  but  they  feel  the  approaching  recur 
rence  of  a  period.  Their  movements  are 


50 

not  yet  decisive.  It  is  as  yet  only  tenta 
tively  that  they  adopt  the  mode  of  the 
Directoire.  It  is  yet  uncertain— a  sort  of 
Boulangerism  in  dress.  But  if  we  watch 
it  carefully  we  shall  be  able  to  predict 
with  some  assurance  the  drift  in  Paris. 
The  Directoire  dress  points  to  another 
period  of  republican  simplicity,  anarchy, 
and  the  rule  of  a  popular  despot. 

It  is  a  great  pity,  in  view  of  this  valua 
ble  instinct  in  women  and  the  prophetic 
significance  of  dress,  that  women  in  the 
United  States  do  not  exercise  their  gtfts 
with  regard  to  their  own  country.  We 
should  then  know  at  any  given  time 
whether  we  are  drifting  into  Blaineism, 
or  Clevelandism,  or  centralization,  or  free- 
trade,  or  extreme  protection,  or  rule  by 
corporations.  We  boast  greatly  of  our 
smartness.  It  is  time  we  were  up  and 
dressed  to  prove  it. 


THE    MYSTERY   OF   THE   SEX. 


'-'-  ^^A^  '  '"*'  "         V    ''  *        t 

&m  - 


HERE  appears  to  be  a  great 
quantity  of  conceit  around, 
especially  concern  ing  wom 
en.  The  statement  was  re 
cently  set  afloat  that  a  well- 
known  lady  had  admitted  that  George 
Meredith  understands  women  better  than 
any  writer  who  has  preceded  him.  This 
may  be  true,  and  it  may  be  a  wily  state 
ment  to  again  throw  men  off  the  track ; 
at  any  rate  it  contains  the  old  assumption 
of  a  mystery,  practically  insoluble,  about 
the  gentler  sex.  Women  generally  en 
courage  this  notion,  and  men  by  their 
gingerly  treatment  of  it  seemed  to  accept 
it.  But  is  it  well  founded,  is  there  any 
more  mystery  about  women  than  about 
men  ?  Is  the  feminine  nature  any  more 
difficult  to  understand  that  the  masculine 


54 

nature  ?  Have  women,  conscious  of  infe 
rior  strength,  woven  this  notion  of  mystery 
about  themselves  as  a  defence,  or  have 
men  simply  idealized  them  for  fictitious 
purposes  ?  To  recur  to  the  case  cited,  is 
there  any  evidence  that  Mr.  Meredith  un 
derstands  human  nature  as  exhibited  in 
women  any  better  than  human  nature  in 
men,  or  is  more  consistent  in  the  produc 
tion  of  one  than  of  the  other  ? 

Historically  it  would  be  interesting  to 
trace  the  rise  of  this  notion  of  woman  as 
an  enigma.  The  savage  races  do  not  ap 
pear  to  have  it.  A  woman  to  the  North 
American  Indian  is  a  simple  affair,  dealt 
with  without  circumlocution.  In  the  Bi 
ble  records  there  is  not  much  mystery 
about  her ;  there  are  many  tributes  to 
her  noble  qualities,  and  some  pretty  se 
vere  and  uncomplimentary  things  are  said 
about  her,  but  there  is  little  affectation  of 
not  understanding  her.  She  may  be  a 
prophetess,  or  a  consoler,  or  a  snare,  but 
she  is  no  more  "  deceitful  and  desperate 
ly  wicked  "  than  anybody  else.  There  is 
nothing  mysterious  about  her  first  re 
corded  performance.  Eve  trusted  the 


55 

serpent,  and  Adam  trusted  Eve.  The 
mystery  was  in  the  serpent.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  the  ancient  Egyptian  wom 
an  was  more  difficult  to  comprehend  than 
the  Egyptian  man.  They  were  both 
doubtless  wily  as  highly  civilized  people 
are  apt  to  be;  the  "serpent  of  old  Nile" 
was  in  them  both.  Is  it  in  fact  till  we 
come  to  mediaeval  times,  and  the  chiv- 
alric  age,  that  women  are  set  up  as  being 
more  incomprehensible  than  men  ?  That 
is,  less  logical,  more  whimsical,  more  un 
certain  in  their  mental  processes?  The 
playwriters  and  essayists  of  the  seven 
teenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  "work 
ed"  this  notion  continually.  They  al 
ways  took  an  investigating  and  speculating 
attitude  towards  women,  that  fostered  the 
conceit  of  their  separateness  and  veiled 
personality.  Every  woman  was  supposed 
to  be  playing  a  part  behind  a  mask.  Mon 
taigne  is  always  investigating  woman  as 
a  mystery.  It  is,  for  instance,  a  mystery 
he  does  not  relish  that,  as  he  says,  wom 
en  commonly  reserve  the  publication  of 
their  vehement  affections  for  their  hus* 
bands  till  they  have  lost  them  ;  then  the 


woful  countenance  "  looks  not  so  much 
back  as  forward,  and  is  intended  rather 
to  get  a  new  husband  than  to  lament  the 
old."  And  he  tells  this  story  :  "  When  I 
was  a  boy,  a  very  beautiful  and  virtuous 
lady  who  is  yet  living,  and  the  widow  of 
a  prince,  had,  I  know  not  what,  more  or 
nament  in  her  dress  than  our  laws  of 
widowhood  will  well  allow,  which  being 
reproached  with  as  a  great  indecency,  she 
made  answer  'that  it  was  because  she 
was  not  cultivating  more  friendships,  and 
would  never  marry  again.'  "  This  cynical 
view  of  woman,  as  well  as  the  extrava 
gantly  complimentary  one  sometimes  tak 
en  by  the  poets,  was  based  upon  the  no 
tion  that  woman  was  an  unexplainable 
being.  When  she  herself  adopted  the 
idea  is  uncertain. 

Of  course  all  this  has  a  very  practical 
bearing  upon  modern  life,  the  position  of 
women  in  it,  and  the  so-called  reforms. 
If  woman  is  so  different  from  man  to  the 
extent  of  being  an  unexplainable  mystery, 
science  ought  to  determine  the  exact  state 
of  the  case,  and  ascertain  if  there  is  any 
remedy  for  it.  If  it  is  only  a  literary  ere- 


57 

ation,  we  ought  to  know  it.  Science  could 
tell,  for  instance,  whether  there  is  a  pecu 
liarity  in  the  nervous  system,  any  compli 
cations  in  the  nervous  centres,  by  which 
the  telegraphic  action  of  the  will  gets 
crossed,  so  that,  for  example,  in  reply  to 
a  proposal  of  marriage,  the  intended 
"  Yes  "  gets  delivered  as  "  No."  Is  it  true 
that  the  mental  process  in  one  sex  is  in 
tuitive,  and  in  the  other  logical,  with  ev 
ery  link  necessary  and  visible?  Is  it 
true,  as  the  romancers  teach,  that  the 
mind  in  one  sex  acts  indirectly  and  in  the 
other  directly,  or  is  this  indirect  process 
only  characteristic  of  exceptions  in  both 
sexes?  Investigation  ought  to  find  this 
out,  so  that  we  can  adjust  the  fit  occupa 
tions  for  both  sexes  on  a  scientific  basis. 
We  are  floundering  about  now  in  a  sea 
of  doubt.  As  society  becomes  more  com 
plicated,  women  will  become  a  greater 
and  greater  mystery,  or  rather  will  be  re 
garded  so  by  themselves  and  be  treated 
so  by  men. 

Who  can  tell  how  much  this  notion  of 
mystery  in  the  sex  stands  in  the  way  of 
its  free  advancement  all  along  the  line? 


58 

Suppose  the  proposal  were  made  to  wom 
en  to  exchange  being  mysterious  for  the 
ballot?  Would  they  do  it?  Or  have 
they  a  sense  of  power  in  the  possession 
of  this  conceded  incomprehensibility  that 
they  would  not  lay  down  for  any-visible  in 
signia  of  that  power  ?  And  if  the  novelists 
and  essayists  have  raised  a  mist  about  the 
sex,  which  it  willingly  masquerades  in,  is 
it  not  time  that  the  scientists  should  de 
termine  whether  the  mystery  exists  in  nat 
ure  or  only  in  the  imagination  ? 


THE   CLOTHES   OF   FICTION. 


HE  Drawer  has  never  underval 
ued  clothes.  Whatever  other 
heresies  it  may  have  had,  how 
ever  it  may  have  insisted  that 
the  more  a  woman  learns,  the 
more  she  knows  of  books,  the  higher  her 
education  is  carried  in  all  the  knowledges, 
the  more  interesting  she  will  be,  not  only  for 
an  hour,  but  as  a  companion  for  life,  it  has 
never  said  that  she  is  less  attractive  when 
dressed  with  taste  and  according  to  the 
season.  Love  itself  could  scarcely  be  ex 
pected  to  survive  a  winter  hat  worn  after 
Easter.  And  the  philosophy  of  this  is  not 
on  the  surface,  nor  applicable  to  women 
only.  In  this  the  highest  of  created  things 
are  under  a  law  having  a  much  wider  ap- 


62 


plication.  Take  as  an  item  novels,  the 
works  of  fiction,which  have  become  an  ab 
solute  necessity  in  the  modern  world,  as 
necessary  to  divert  the  mind  loaded  with 
care  and  under  actual  strain  as  to  fill  the 
vacancy  in  otherwise  idle  brains.  They 
have  commonly  a  summer  and  a  winter 
apparel.  The  publishers  understand  this. 
As  certainly  as  the  birds  appear,  comes 
the  crop  of  summer  novels,  fluttering  down 
upon  the  stalls,  in  procession  through  the 
railway  trains,  littering  the  drawing-room 
tables,  in  light  paper  covers,  ornamental, 
attractive  in  colors  and  fanciful  designs, 
as  welcome  and  grateful  as  the  girls  in 
muslin.  When  the  thermometer  is  in  the 
eighties,  anything  heavy  and  formidable 
is  distasteful.  The  house-keeper  knows 
we  want  few  solid  dishes,  but  salads  and 
cooling  drinks.  The  publisher  knows 
that  we  want  our  literature  (or  what  pass 
es  for  that)  in  light  array.  In  the  winter 
we  prefer  the  boards  and  the  rich  heavy 
binding,  however  light  the  tale  may  be; 
but  in  the  summer,  though  the  fiction  be 
as  grave  and  tragic  as  wandering  love 
and  bankruptcy,  we  would  have  it  come 


to  us   lightly  clad  —  out  of  stays,  as   it 
were. 

It  would  hardly  be  worth  while  to  refer 
to  this  taste  in  the  apparel  of  our  fiction 
did  it  not  have  deep  and  esoteric  sugges 
tions,  and  could  not  the  novelists  them 
selves  get  a  hint  from  it.  Is  it  realized 
how  much  depends  upon  the  clothes  that 
are  worn  by  the  characters  in  the  novels 
—  clothes  put  on  not  only  to  exhibit  the 
inner  life  of  the  characters,  but  to  please 
the  readers  who  are  to  associate  with 
them  ?  It  is  true  that  there  are  novels 
that  almost  do  away  with  the  necessity 
of  fashion  magazines  and  fashion  plates 
in  the  family,  so  faithful  are  they  in  the 
latest  millinery  details,  and  so  fully  do 
they  satisfy  the  longing  of  all  of  us  to 
know  what  is  chic  for  the  moment.  It  is 
pretty  well  understood,  also,  that  women, 
and  even  men,  are  made  to  exhibit  the 
deepest  passions  and  the  tenderest  emo 
tions  in  the  crises  of  their  lives  by  the 
clothes  they  put  on.  How  the  woman  in 
such  a  crisis  hesitates  before  her  ward 
robe,  and  at  last  chooses  just  what  will 
express  her  innermost  feeling!  Does  she 


64 

dress  for  her  lover  as  she  dresses  to  re 
ceive  her  lawyer  who  has  come  to  inform 
her  that  she  is  living  beyond  her  income? 
Would  not  the  lover  be  spared  time  and 
pain  if  he  knew,  as  the  novelist  knows, 
whether  the  young  lady  is  dressing  for  a 
rejection  or  an  acceptance  ?  Why  does 
the  lady  intending  suicide  always  throw 
on  a  water- proof  when  she  steals  out  of 
the  house  to  drown  herself?  The  novel 
ist  knows  the  deep  significance  of  every 
article  of  toilet,  and  nature  teaches  him 
to  array  his  characters  for  the  summer 
novel  in  the  airy  draperies  suitable  to  the 
season.  It  is  only  good  art  that  the  cover 
of  the  novel  and  the  covers  of  the  char 
acters  shall  be  in  harmony.  He  knows, 
also,  that  the  characters  in  the  winter 
novel  must  be  adequately  protected.  We 
speak,  of  course,  of  the  season  stories. 
Novels  that  are  to  run  through  a  year,  or 
maybe  many  years,  and  are  to  set  forth 
the  passions  and  trials  of  changing  age 
and  varying  circumstance,  require  differ 
ent  treatment  and  wider  millinery  knowl 
edge.  They  are  naturally  more  ex 
pensive.  The  wardrobe  required  in  an 


all-round   novel   would   bankrupt   most 
of  us. 

But  to  confine  ourselves  to  the  season 
novel,  it  is  strange  that  some  one  has  not 
invented  the  patent  adjustable  story  that 
with  a  slight  change  would  do  for  summer 
or  winter,  following  the  broad  hint  of  the 
publishers,  who  hasten  in  May  to  throw 
whatever  fiction  they  have  on  hand  into 
summer  clothes.  The  winter  novel,  by 
this  invention,  could  be  easily  fitted  for 
summer  wear.  All  the  novelist  need  do 
would  be  to  change  the  clothes  of  his 
characters.  And  in  the  autumn,  if  the 
novel  proved  popular,  he  could  change 
again,  with  the  advantage  of  being  in  the 
latest  fashion.  It  would  only  be  neces 
sary  to  alter  a  few  sentences  in  a  few  of 
the  stereotype  pages.  Of  course  this 
would  make  necessary  other  slight  altera 
tions,  for  no  kind-hearted  writer  would 
be  cruel  to  his  own  creations,  and  expose 
them  to  the  vicissitudes  of  the  seasons. 
He  could  insert  "rain  "  for  "snow,"  and 
"  green  leaves  "  for  "  skeleton  branches," 
make  a  few  verbal  changes  of  that  sort, 
and  regulate  the  thermometer.  It  would 
5 


66 


cost  very  little  to  adjust  the  novel  in  this 
way  to  any  season.  It  is  worth  think 
ing  of. 

And  this  leads  to  a  remark  upon  the 
shocking  indifference  of  some  novelists 
to  the  ordinary  comfort  of  their  charac 
ters.  In  practical  life  we  cannot,  but  in 
his  realm  the  novelist  can,  control  the 
weather.  He  can  make  it  generally  pleas 
ant.  We  do  not  object  to  a  terrific  thun 
der-shower  now  and  then,  as  the  sign  of 
despair  and  a  lost  soul,  but  perpetual 
drizzle  and  grayness  and  inclemency  are 
tedious  to  the  reader,  who  has  enough 
bad  weather  in  his  private  experience. 
The  English  are  greater  sinners  in  this 
respect  than  we  are.  They  seem  to  take 
a  brutal  delight  in  making  it  as  unpleas 
ant  as  possible  for  their  fictitious  people. 
There  is  R — b — rt  'Ism — r',  for  example. 
External  trouble  is  piled  on  to  the  inter 
nal.  The  characters  are  in  a  perpetual 
soak.  There  is  not  a  dry  rag  on  any  of 
them,  from  the  beginning  of  the  book  to 
the  end.  They  are  sent  out  in  all  weath 
ers,  and  are  drenched  every  day.  Often 
their  wet  clothes  are  frozen  on  them  \ 


they  are  exposed  to  cutting  winds  and 
sleet  in  their  faces,  bedrabbled  in  damp 
grass,  stood  against  slippery  fences,  with 
hail  and  frost  lowering  their  vitality, 
and  expected  under  these  circumstances 
to  make  love  and  be  good  Christians. 
Drenched  and  wind-blown  for  years,  that 
is  what  they  are.  It  may  be  that  this 
treatment  has  excited  the  sympathy  of 
the  world,  but  is  it  legitimate  ?  Has  a 
novelist  the  right  to  subject  his  creations 
to  tortures  that  he  would  not  dare  to  in 
flict  upon  his  friends?  It  is  no  excuse  to 
say  that  this  is  normal  English  weather ; 
it  is  not  the  office  of  fiction  to  intensify 
and  rub  in  the  unavoidable  evils  of  life. 
The  modern  spirit  of  consideration  for 
fictitious  characters  that  prevails  with  re 
gard  to  dress  ought  to  extend  in  a  reason 
able  degree  to  their  weather.  This  is  not 
a  strained  corollary  to  the  demand  for  an 
appropriately  costumed  novel. 


THE    BROAD   A. 


T  cannot  for  a  moment  be  supposed  that 
the  Drawer  would  discourage  self-culture 
and  refinement  of  manner  and  of  speech. 
But  it  would  not  hesitate  to  give  a  note 
of  warning  if  it  believed  that  the  present 
devotion  to  literature  and  the  pursuits  of 
the  mind  were  likely,  by  the  highest  au 
thorities,  to  be  considered  bad  form.  In 
an  intellectually  inclined  city  (not  in  the 
north-east)  a  club  of  ladies  has  been  form 
ed  for  the  cultivation  of  the  broad  a  in 
speech.  Sporadic  efforts  have  hitherto 
been  made  for  the  proper  treatment  of 
this  letter  of  the  alphabet  with  individ 
ual  success,  especially  with  those  who 
have  been  in  England,  or  have  known 
English  men  and  women  of  the  broad- 
gauge  variety.  Discerning  travellers  have 


made  the  American  pronunciation  of  the 
letter  a  a  reproach  to  the  republic,  that  is 
to  say,  a  means  of  distinguishing  a  native 
of  this  country.  The  true  American  as 
pires  to  be  cosmopolitan,  and  does  not 
want  to  be  "  spotted  " — if  that  word  may 
be  used — in  society  by  any  peculiarity  of 
speech,  that  is,  by  any  American  peculiar 
ity.  Why,  at  the  bottom  of  the  matter, 
a  narrow  a  should  be  a  disgrace  it  is  not 
easy  to  see,  but  it  needs  no  reason  if  fash 
ion  or  authority  condemns  it.  This  coun 
try  is  so  spread  out,  without  any  social 
or  literary  centre  universally  recognized 
as  such,  and  the  narrow  a  has  become  so 
prevalent,  that  even  fashion  finds  it  diffi 
cult  to  reform  it.  The  best  people,  who 
are  determined  to  broaden  all  their  a's, 
will  forget  in  moments  of  excitement, 
and  fall  back  into  old  habits.  It  requires 
constant  vigilance  to  keep  the  letter  a 
flattened  out.  It  is  in  vain  that  scholars 
have  pointed  out  that  in  the  use  of  this 
letter  lies  the  main  difference  between  the 
English  and  the  American  speech  ;  either 
Americans  generally  do  not  care  if  this 
is  the  fact,  or  fashion  can  only  work  a 


reform  in  a  limited  number  of  people. 
It  seems,  therefore,  necessary  that  there 
should  be  an  organized  effort  to  deal 
with  this  pronunciation,  and  clubs  will  no 
doubt  be  formed  all  over  the  country,  in 
imitation  of  the  one  mentioned,  until  the 
broad  a  will  become  as  common  as  flies 
in  summer.  When  this  result  is  attained 
it  will  be  time  to  attack  the  sound  of 
u  with  clubs,  and  make  universal  the 
French  sound.  In  time  the  American 
pronunciation  will  become  as  superior  to 
all  others  as  are  the  American  sewing- 
machines  and  reapers.  In  the  Broad  A 
Club  every  member  who  misbehaves — 
that  is,  mispronounces — is  fined  a  nickel 
for  each  offence.  Of  course  in  the  be 
ginning  there  is  a  good  deal  of  revenue 
from  this  source,  but  the  revenue  dimin 
ishes  as  the  club  improves,  so  that  we 
have  the  anomaly  of  its  failure  to  be  self- 
supporting  in  proportion  to  its  excellence. 
Just  now  if  these  clubs  could  suddenly 
become  universal,  and  the  penalty  be  en 
forced,  we  could  have  the  means  of  pay 
ing  off  the  national  debt  in  a  year. 

We  do  not  wish  to  attach  too  much 


74 

importance  to  this  movement,  but  rather 
to  suggest  to  a  continent  yearning  foi 
culture  in  letters  and  in  speech  whether 
it  may  not  be  carried  too  far.  The  reader 
will  remember  that  there  came  a  time  in 
Athens  when  culture  could  mock  at  itself, 
and  the  rest  of  the  country  may  be  warn 
ed  in  time  of  a  possible  departure  from 
good  form  in  devotion  to  language  and 
literature  by  the  present  attitude  of  mod 
ern  Athens.  Probably  there  is  no  eso 
teric  depth  in  literature  or  religion,  no 
refinement  in  intellectual  luxury,  that 
this  favored  city  has  not  sounded.  It  is 
certainly  significant,  therefore,  when  the 
priestesses  and  devotees  of  mental  supe 
riority  there  turn  upon  it  and  rend  it, 
when  they  are  heartily  tired  of  the  whole 
literary  business.  There  is  always  this 
danger  when  anything  is  passionately 
pursued  as  a  fashion,  that  it  will  one  day 
cease  to  be  the  fashion.  Plato  and  Bud 
dha  and  even  Emerson  become  in  time 
like  a  last  season's  fashion  plate.  Even 
a  "  friend  of  the  spirit "  will  have  to  go. 
Culture  is  certain  to  mock  itself  in  time. 
The  clubs  for  the  improvement  of  the 


75 

mind — the  female  mind — and  of  speech, 
which  no  doubt  had  their  origin  in  mod 
ern  Athens,  should  know,  then,  that  it  is 
the  highest  mark  of  female  culture  now 
in  that  beautiful  town  to  despise  culture, 
to  affect  the  gayest  and  most  joyous  ig 
norance — ignorance  of  books,  of  all  forms 
of  so-called  intellectual  development,  and 
all  literary  men,  women,  and  productions 
whatsoever  !  This  genuine  movement  of 
freedom  may  be  a  real  emancipation.  If 
it  should  reach  the  metropolis,  what  a 
relief  it  might  bring  to  thousands  who 
are,  under  a  high  sense  of  duty,  strug 
gling  to  advance  the  intellectual  life. 
There  is  this  to  be  said,  however,  that  it 
is  only  the  very  brightest  people,  those 
who  have  no  need  of  culture,  who  have 
in  fact  passed  beyond  all  culture,  who  can 
take  this  position  in  regard  to  it,  and  act 
ually  revel  in  the  delights  of  ignorance. 
One  must  pass  into  a  calm  place  when 
he  is  beyond  the  desire  to  know  anything 
or  to  do  anything. 

It  is  a  chilling  thought,  unless  one  can 
rise  to  the  highest  philosophy  of  life,  that 
even  the  broad  a,  when  it  is  attained,  may 


not  be  a  permanence.  Let  it  be  com 
mon,  and  what  distinction  will  there  be 
in  it  ?  When  devotion  to  study,  to  the 
reading  of  books,  to  conversation  on  im 
proving  topics,  becomes  a  universal  fash 
ion,  is  it  not  evident  that  one  can  only 
keep  a  leadership  in  fashion  by  throwing 
the  whole  thing  overboard,  and  going 
forward  into  the  natural  gayety  of  life, 
which  cares  for  none  of  these  things? 
We  suppose  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  will  stand  if  the  day  comes 
— nay,  now  is — when  the  women  of  Chi 
cago  call  the  women  of  Boston  frivolous, 
and  the  women  of  Boston  know  their 
immense  superiority  and  advancement  in 
being  so,  but  it  would  be  a  blank  surprise 
to  the  country  generally  to  know  that  it 
was  on  the  wrong  track.  The  fact  is 
that  culture  in  this  country  is  full  of  sur 
prises,  and  so  doubles  and  feints  and 
comes  back  upon  itself  that  the  most 
diligent  recorder  can  scarcely  note  its 
changes.  The  Drawer  can  only  warn  ;  it 
cannot  advise. 


CHEWING   GUM. 


I,  N  language  that  is  unfortunately 
understood  by  the  greater  portion 
of  the  people  who  speak  English, 
thousands  are  saying  on  the  first 
of  January  —  in  1890,  a  far-off  date  that 
it  is  wonderful  any  one  has  lived  to  see 
— "  Let  us  have  a  new  deal !"  It  is  a  nat 
ural  exclamation,  and  does  not  necessarily 
mean  any  change  of  purpose.  It  always 
seems  to  a  man  that  if  he  could  shuffle 
the  cards  he  could  increase  his  advant 
ages  in  the  game  of  life,  and,  to  contin 
ue  the  figure  which  needs  so  little  ex 
planation,  it  usually  appears  to  him  that 
he  could  play  anybody  else's  hand  better 
than  his  own.  In  all  the  good  resolu 
tions  of  the  new  year,  then,  it  happens 


that  perhaps  the  most  sincere  is  the  de 
termination  to  get  a  better  hand.  Many 
mistake  this  for  repentance  and  an  inten 
tion  to  reform,  when  generally  it  is  only 
the  desire  for  a  new  shuffle  of  the  cards. 
Let  us  have  a  fresh  pack  and  a  new  deal, 
and  start  fair.  It  seems  idle,  therefore, 
for  the  moralist  to  indulge  in  a  homily 
about  annual  good  intentions,  and  habits 
that  ought  to  be  dropped  or  acquired,  on 
the  first  of  January.  He  can  do  little 
more  than  comment  on  the  passing  show. 
It  will  be  admitted  that  if  the  world  at 
this  date  is  not  socially  reformed  it  is  not 
the  fault  of  the  Drawer,  and  for  the  rea 
son  that  it  has  been  not  so  much  a  critic 
as  an  explainer  and  encourager.  It  is  in 
the  latter  character  that  it  undertakes  to 
defend  and  justify  a  national  industry 
that  has  become  very  important  within 
the  past  ten  years.  A  great  deal  of  capi 
tal  is  invested  in  it,  and  millions  of  peo 
ple  are  actively  employed  in  it.  The 
varieties  of  chewing  gum  that  are  manu 
factured  would  be  a  matter  of  surprise  to 
those  who  have  paid  no  attention  to  the 
subject,  and  who  may  suppose  that  the 


8i 

millions  of  mouths  they  see  engaged  in 
its  mastication  have  a  common  and  vulgar 
taste.  From  the  fact  that  it  can  be  ob 
tained  at  the  apothecary's,  an  impression 
has  got  abroad  that  it  is  medicinal.  This 
is  not  true.  The  medical  profession  do 
not  use  it,  and  what  distinguishes  it  from 
drugs — that  they  also  do  not  use — is  the 
fact  that  they  do  not  prescribe  it.  It  is 
neither  a  narcotic  nor  a  stimulant.  It 
cannot  strictly  be  said  to  soothe  or  to 
excite.  The  habit  of  using  it  differs  to 
tally  from  that  of  the  chewing  of  tobacco 
or  the  dipping  of  snuff.  It  might,  by  a 
purely  mechanical  operation,  keep  a  per 
son  awake,  but  no  one  could  go  to  sleep 
chewing  gum.  It  is  in  itself  neither 
tonic  nor  sedative.  It  is  to  be  noticed 
also  that  the  gum  habit  differs  from  the 
tobacco  habit  in  that  the  aromatic  and 
elastic  substance  is  masticated,  while  the 
tobacco  never  is,  and  that  the  mastica 
tion  leads  to  nothing  except  more  masti 
cation.  The  task  is  one  that  can  never 
be  finished.  The  amount  of  energy  ex 
pended  in  this  process  if  capitalized  or 
conserved  would  produce  great  results. 


Of  course  the  individual  does  little,  but 
if  the  power  evolved  by  the  practice  in  a 
district  school  could  be  utilized,  it  would 
suffice  to  run  the  kindergarten  depart 
ment.  The  writer  has  seen  a  railway  car 
— say  in  the  West — filled  with  young 
women,  nearly  every  one  of  whose  jaws 
and  pretty  mouths  was  engaged  in  this 
pleasing  occupation  ;  and  so  much  power 
was  generated  that  it  would,  if  applied, 
have  kept  the  car  in  motion  if  the  steam 
had  been  shut  off — at  least  it  would  have 
furnished  the  motive  for  illuminating  the 
car  by  electricity. 

This  national  industry  is  the  subject  of 
constant  detraction,  satire,  and  ridicule 
by  the  newspaper  press.  This  is  because 
it  is  not  understood,  and  it  may  be  be 
cause  it  is  mainly  a  female  accomplish 
ment  :  the  few  men  who  chew  gum  may 
be  supposed  to  do  so  by  reason  of  gal 
lantry.  There  might  be  no  more  sym 
pathy  with  it  in  the  press  if  the  real 
reason  for  the  practice  were  understood, 
but  it  would  be  treated  more  respectfully. 
Some  have  said  that  the  practice  arises 
from  nervousness — the  idle  desire  to  be 


busy  without  doing  anything — and  be 
cause  it  fills  up  the  pauses  of  vacuity  in 
conversation.  But  this  would  not  fully 
account  for  the  practice  of  it  in  solitude. 
Some  have  regarded  it  as  in  obedience  to 
the  feminine  instinct  for  the  cultivation 
of  patience  and  self-denial — patience  in  a 
fruitless  activity,  and  self-denial  in  the 
eternal  act  of  mastication  without  swal 
lowing.  It  is  no  more  related  to  these 
virtues  than  it  is  to  the  habit  of  the  re 
flective  cow  in  chewing  her  cud.  The 
cow  would  never  chew  gum.  The  ex 
planation  is  a  more  philosophical  one, 
and  relates  to  a  great  modern  social 
movement.  It  is  to  strengthen  and  de 
velop  and  make  more  masculine  the  low 
er  jaw.  The  critic  who  says  that  this  is 
needless,  that  the  inclination  in  women 
to  talk  would  adequately  develop  this, 
misses  the  point  altogether.  Even  if  it 
could  be  proved  that  women  are  greater 
chatterers  than  men,  the  critic  would 
gain  nothing.  Women  have  talked  freely 
since  creation,  but  it  remains  true  that  a 
heavy,  strong  lower  jaw  is  a  distinctively 
masculine  characteristic.  It  is  remarked 


84 

that  if  a  woman  has  a  strong  lower  jaw 
she  is  like  a  man.  Conversation  does 
not  create  this  difference,  nor  remove  it ; 
for  the  development  of  a  lower  jaw  in 
women  constant  mechanical  exercise  of 
the  muscles  is  needed.  Now,  a  spirit  of 
emancipation,  of  emulation,  is  abroad,  as 
it  ought  to  be,  for  the  regeneration  of  the 
world.  It  is  sometimes  called  the  com 
ing  to  the  front  of  woman  in  every  act 
and  occupation  that  used  to  belong  al 
most  exclusively  to  man.  It  is  not  neces 
sary  to  say  a  word  to  justify  this.  But  it 
is  often  accompanied  by  a  misconception, 
namely,  that  it  is  necessary  for  woman  to 
be  like  man,  not  only  in  habits,  but  in  cer 
tain  physical  characteristics.  No  wom 
an  desires  a  beard,  because  a  beard  means 
care  and  trouble,  and  would  detract  from 
feminine  beauty,  but  to  have  a  strong 
and,  in  appearance,  a  resolute  underjaw 
may  be  considered  a  desirable  note  of 
masculinity,  and  of  masculine  power  and 
privilege,  in  the  good  time  coming. 
Hence  the  cultivation  of  it  by  the  chew 
ing  of  gum  is  a  recognizable  and  reason 
able  instinct,  and  the  practice  can  be  de- 


85 

fended  as  neither  a  whim  nor  a  vain 
waste  of  energy  and  nervous  force.  In  a 
generation  or  two  it  may  be  laid  aside  as 
no  longer  necessary,  or  men  may  be  com 
pelled  to  resort  to  it  to  preserve  their  su 
premacy. 


WOMEN    IN   CONGRESS. 


oes  not  seem  to  be  decided  yet 
whether  women  are  to  take  the 
Senate  or  the  House  at  Washing 
ton  in  the  new  development  of  what  is 
called  the  dual  government.  There  are 
disadvantages  in  both.  The  members 
of  the  Senate  are  so  few  that  the  wom 
en  of  the  country  would  not  be  adequate 
ly  represented  in  it ;  and  the  Chamber 
in  which  the  House  meets  is  too  large 
for  women  to  make  speeches  in  with  any 
pleasure  to  themselves  or  their  hearers. 
This  last  objection  is,  however,  frivolous, 


90 

for  the  speeches  will  be  printed  in  the 
Record ;  and  it  is  as  easy  to  count  women 
on  a  vote  as  men.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  objection,  either,  that  the  Chamber 
would  need  to  be  remodelled,  and  the 
smoking-rooms  be  turned  into  Day  Nurs 
eries.  The  coming  woman  will  not  smoke, 
to  be  sure ;  neither  will  she,  in  coming  for 
ward  to  take  charge  of  the  government, 
plead  the  Baby  Act.  Only  those  women, 
we  are  told,  would  be  elected  to  Congress 
whose  age  and  position  enable  them  to 
devote  themselves  exclusively  to  politics. 
The  question,  therefore,  of  taking  to  them 
selves  the  Senate  or  the  House  will  be 
decided  by  the  women  themselves  upon 
other  grounds — as  to  whether  they  wish 
to  take  the  initiative  in  legislation  and 
hold  the  power  of  the  purse,  or  whether 
they  prefer  to  act  as  a  check,  to  exercise 
the  high  treaty -making  power,  and  to 
have  a  voice  in  selecting  the  women  who 
shall  be  sent  to  represent  us  abroad. 
Other  things  being  equal,  women  will 
naturally  select  the  Upper  House,  and 
especially  as  that  will  give  them  an  op 
portunity  to  reject  any  but  the  the  most 


competent  women  for  the  Supreme  Bench. 
The  irreverent  scoffers  at  our  Supreme 
Court  have  in  the  past  complained  (though 
none  do  now)  that  there  were  "old  wom 
en  "  in  gowns  on  the  bench.  There  would 
be  no  complaint  of  the  kind  in  the  fut 
ure.  The  judges  would  be  as  pretty  as 
those  who  assisted  in  the  judgment  of 
Paris,  with  changed  functions;  there  would 
be  no  monotony  in  the  dress,  and  the  Su 
preme  Bench  would  be  one  of  the  most  at 
tractive  spectacles  in  Washington.  When 
the  judges  as  well  as  the  advocates  are 
Portias,  the  law  will  be  an  agreeable  oc 
cupation. 

This  is,  however,  mere  speculation.  We 
do  not  understand  that  it  is  the  immediate 
purpose  of  women  to  take  the  whole  gov 
ernment,  though  some  extravagant  ex 
pectations  are  raised  by  the  admission  of 
new  States  that  are  ruled  by  women.  They 
may  wish  to  divide — and  conquer.  One 
plan  is,  instead  of  dual  Chambers  of  op 
posite  sexes,  to  mingle  in  both  the  Senate 
and  the  House.  And  this  is  more  likely 
to  be  the  plan  adopted,  because  the  revo 
lution  is  not  to  be  violent,  and,  indeed, 


92 

cannot  take  place  without  some  readjust 
ment  of  the  home  life.  We  have  at  pres 
ent  what  Charles  Reade  would  have  called 
only  a  right-handed  civilization.  To  speak 
metaphorically,  men  cannot  use  their  left 
hands,  or,  to  drop  the  metaphor,  before 
the  government  can  be  fully  reorganized 
men  must  learn  to  do  women's  work.  It 
may  be  a  fair  inference  from  this  move 
ment  that  women  intend  to  abandon  the 
sacred  principle  of  Home  Rule.  This 
abandonment  is  foreshadowed  in  a  recent 
election  in  a  small  Western  city,  where 
the  female  voters  made  a  clean  sweep, 
elected  an  entire  city  council  of  women 
and  most  of  the  other  officers,  including 
the  police  judge  and  the  mayor.  The 
latter  lady,  by  one  of  those  intrusions  of 
nature  which  reform  is  not  yet  able  to 
control,  became  a  mother  and  a  mayor 
the  same  week.  Her  husband  had  been 
city  clerk,  and  held  over  ;  but  fortunately 
an  arrangement  was  made  with  him  to 
stay  at  home  and  take  care  of  the  baby, 
unofficially,  while  the  mayor  attends  to 
her  public  duties.  Thus  the  city  clerk 
will  gradually  be  initiated  into  the  duties 


93 

of  home  rule,  and  when  the  mayor  is 
elected  to  Congress,  he  will  be  ready  to 
accompany  her  to  Washington  and  keep 
house.  The  imagination  likes  to  dwell 
upon  this,  for  the  new  order  is  capable 
of  infinite  extension.  When  the  State 
takes  care  of  all  the  children  in  govern 
ment  nurseries,  and  the  mayor  has  taken 
her  place  in  the  United  States  Senate,  her 
husband,  if  he  has  become  sufficiently  re 
formed  and  feminized,  may  go  to  the 
House,  and  the  reunited  family  of  two, 
clubbing  their  salaries,  can  live  in  great 
comfort. 

All  this  can  be  easily  arranged,  whether 
we  are  to  have  a  dual  government  of 
sexes  or  a  mixed  House  and  Senate.  The 
real  difficulty  is  about  a  single  Executive. 
Neither  sex  will  be  willing  to  yield  to  the 
other  this  vast  power.  We  might  elect 
a  man  and  wife  President  and  Vice-Presi- 
dent,  but  the  Vice- President,  of  whatever 
sex,  could  not  well  preside  over  the  Sen 
ate  and  in  the  White  House  at  the  same 
time.  It  is  true  that  the  Constitution 
provides  that  the  President  and  Vice- 
President  shall  not  be  of  the  same  State, 


94 

but  residence  can  be  acquired  to  get  over 
this  as  easily  as  to  obtain  a  divorce  ;  and 
a  Constitution  that  insists  upon  speaking 
of  the  President  as  "  he  "  is  too  antiquated 
to  be  respected.  When  the  President  is 
a  woman,  it  can  matter  little  whether  her 
husband  or  some  other  woman  presides 
in  the  Senate.  Even  the  reformers  will 
hardly  insist  upon  two  Presidents  in  order 
to  carry  out  the  equality  idea,  so  that  we 
are  probably  anticipating  difficulties  that 
will  not  occur  in  practice. 

The  Drawer  has  only  one  more  practi 
cal  suggestion.  As  the  right  of  voting 
carries  with  it  the  right  to  hold  any  elect 
ive  office,  a  great  change  must  take  place 
in  Washington  life.  Now  for  some  years 
the  divergence  of  society  and  politics  has 
been  increasing  at  the  capital.  With  wom 
en  in  both  Houses,  and  on  the  Supreme 
Bench,  and  at  the  heads  of  the  depart 
ments,  social  and  political  life  will  become 
one  and  the  same  thing ;  receptions  and 
afternoon  teas  will  be  held  in  the  Senate 
and  House,  and  political  caucuses  in  all 
the  drawing-rooms.  And  then  life  will 
begin  to  be  interesting. 


J\ 


SHALL   WOMEN    PROPOSE? 


HE  shyness  of  man  —  meaning  the 
other  sex  "  referred  to  in  the  wom 
an's  journals — has  often  been  noticed  in 
novels,  and  sometimes  in  real  life.  This 
shyness  is,  however,  so  exceptional  as  to 
be  suspicious.  The  shy  young  man  may 
provoke  curiosity,  but  he  does  not  always 
inspire  respect.  Roughly  estimated,  shy 
ness  is  not  considered  a  manly  quality, 
while  it  is  one  of  the  most  ^leasing  and 
attractive  of  the  feminine  traits,  and  there 
is  something  pathetic  in  the  expression 
"  He  is  as  shy  as  a  girl ;"  it  may  appeal 
for  sympathy  and  the  exercise  of  the  pro 
tective  instinct  in  women.  Unfortunate 
ly  it  is  a  little  discredited,  so  many  of  the 
old  plays  turning  upon  its  assumption  by 
young  blades  who  are  no  better  than  they 
should  be. 


What  would  be  the  effect  upon  the  mas 
culine  character  and  comfort  if  this  shy 
ness  should  become  general,  as  it  may  in 
a  contingency  that  is  already  on  the  hori 
zon  ?  We  refer,  of  course,  to  the  sugges 
tion,  coming  from  various  quarters,  that 
women  should  propose.  The  reasonable 
ness  of  this  suggestion  may  not  lie  on  the 
surface  ;  it  may  not  be  deduced  from  the 
uniform  practice,  beginning  with  the  prim 
itive  men  and  women ;  it  may  not  be  in 
ferred  from  the  open  nature  of  the  two 
sexes  (for  the  sake  of  argument  two 
sexes  must  still  be  insisted  on);  but  it  is 
found  in  the  advanced  civilization  with 
which  we  are  struggling.  Why  should 
not  women  propose  ?  Why  should  they 
be  at  a  disadvantage  in  an  affair  which 
concerns  the  happiness  of  the  whole  life  ? 
They  have  as  much  right  to  a  choice  as 
men,  and  to  an  opportunity  to  exercise 
it.  Why  should  they  occupy  a  negative 
position,  and  be  restricted,  in  making  the 
most  important  part  of  their  career,  whol 
ly  to  the  choice  implied  in  refusals?  In 
fact,  marriage  really  concerns  them  more 
than  it  does  men ;  they  have  to  bear  the 


99 

chief  of  its  burdens.  A  wide  and  free 
choice  for  them  would,  then,  seem  to  be 
only  fair.  Undeniably  a  great  many  men 
are  inattentive,  unobserving,  immersed  in 
some  absorbing  pursuit,  undecided,  and 
at  times  bashful,  and  liable  to  fall  into 
union  with  women  who  happen  to  be 
near  them,  rather  than  with  those  who 
are  conscious  that  they  would  make  them 
the  better  wives.  Men,  unaided  by  the 
finer  feminine  instincts  of  choice,  are  so 
apt  to  be  deceived.  In  fact,  man's  ina 
bility  to  "  match  "  anything  is  notorious. 
If  he  cannot  be  trusted  in  the  matter  of 
worsted-work,  why  should  he  have  such 
distinctive  liberty  in  the  most  important 
matter  of  his  life?  Besides,  there  are 
many  men — and  some  of  the  best — who 
get  into  a  habit  of  not  marrying  at  all, 
simply  because  the  right  woman  has  not 
presented  herself  at  the  right  time.  Per 
haps,  if  women  had  the  open  privilege  of 
selection,  many  a  good  fellow  would  be 
rescued  from  miserable  isolation,  and  per 
haps  also  many  a  noble  woman  whom 
chance,  or  a  stationary  position,  or  the 
inertia  of  the  other  sex,  has  left  to  bloom 


alone,  and  waste  her  sweetness  on  rela 
tions,  would  be  the  centre  of  a  charming 
home,  furnishing  the  finest  spectacle  seen 
in  this  uphill  world — a  woman  exercising 
gracious  hospitality,  and  radiating  to  a 
circle  far  beyond  her  home  the  influence 
of  her  civilizing  personality.  For,  not 
withstanding  all  the  centrifugal  forces  of 
this  age,  it  is  probable  that  the  home  will 
continue  to  be  the  fulcrum  on  which 
women  will  move  the  world. 

It  may  be  objected  that  it  would  be  un 
fair  to  add  this  opportunity  to  the  already 
overpowering  attractions  of  woman,  and 
that  man  would  be  put  at  an  immense 
disadvantage,  since  he  might  have  too 
much  gallantry,  or  not  enough  presence 
of  mind,  to  refuse  a  proposal  squarely  and 
fascinatingly  made,  although  his  judg 
ment  scarcely  consented,  and  his  ability 
to  support  a  wife  were  more  than  doubt 
ful.  Women  would  need  to  exercise  a 
great  deal  of  prudence  and  discretion, 
or  there  would  be  something  like  a  panic, 
and  a  cry  along  the  male  line  of  Sairve 
qui  pent;  for  it  is  matter  of  record  that 
the  bravest  men  will  sometimes  run  away 
from  danger  on  a  sudden  impulse. 


This  prospective  -social  jreyahitian  sug'- 
gests  many  inquiries.  What  would  be 
the  effect  upon  the  female  character  and 
disposition  of  a  possible,  though  not 
probable,  refusal,  or  of  several  refusals? 
Would  she  become  embittered  and  des 
perate,  and  act  as  foolishly  as  men  often 
do  ?  Would  her  own  sex  be  considerate, 
and  give  her  a  fair  field  if  they  saw  she 
was  paying  attention  to  a  young  man, 
or  an  old  one  ?  And  what  effect  would 
this  change  in  relations  have  upon  men  ? 
Would  it  not  render  that  sporadic  shy 
ness  of  which  we  have  spoken  epidemic? 
Would  it  frighten  men,  rendering  their 
position  less  stable  in  their  own  eyes,  or 
would  it  feminize  them — that  is,  make 
them  retiring,  blushing,  self-conscious  be 
ings?  And  would  this  change  be  of  any 
injury  to  them  in  their  necessary  fight  for 
existence  in  this  pushing  world  ?  What 
would  be  the  effect  upon  courtship  if 
both  the  men  and  the  women  approach 
ed  each  other  as  wooers?  In  ordinary 
transactions  one  is  a  buyer  and  one  is 
a  seller — to  put  it  coarsely.  If  seller 
met  seller  and  buyer  met  buyer,  trade 


wcoJd  lanlgvuski*  'But  this  figure  cannot 
be  continued,  for  there  is  no  romance  in 
a  bargain  of  any  sort ;  and  what  we  should 
most  fear  in  a  scientific  age  is  the  loss  of 
romance. 

This  is,  however,  mere  speculation. 
The  serious  aspect  of  the  proposed 
change  is  the  effect  it  will  have  upon  the 
character  of  men,  who  are  not  enough 
considered  in  any  of  these  discussions. 
The  revolution  will  be  a  radical  one  in 
one  respect.  We  may  admit  that  in  the 
future  woman  can  take  care  of  herself, 
but  how  will  it  be  with  man,  who  has  had 
little  disciplinary  experience  of  adversity, 
simply  because  he  has  been  permitted  to 
have  his  own  way.  "1  Heretofore  his  life 
has  had  a  stimulus.  When  he  proposes  to 
a  woman,  he  in  fact  says  :  "  I  am  able  to 
support  you  ;  I  am  able  to  protect  you 
from  the  rough  usage  of  the  world  ;  I  am 
strong  and  ambitious,  and  eager  to  take 
upon  myself  the  lovely  bondage  of  this 
responsibility.  I  offer  you  this  love  be 
cause  I  feel  the  courage  and  responsibil 
ity  of  my  position."  That  is  the  manly 
part  of  it.  What  effect  will  it  have  upon 


io3 

his  character  to  be  waiting  round,  unse- 
lected  and  undecided,  until  some  woman 
comes  to  him,  and  fixes  her  fascinating 
eyes  upon  him,  and  says,  in  effect :  "I  can 
support  you  ;  I  can  defend  you.  Have  no 
fear  of  the  future ;  I  will  be  at  once  your 
shield  and  your  backbone.  I  take  the  re 
sponsibility  of  my  choice."  There  are  a 
great  many  men  now,  who  have  sneaked 
into  their  positions  by  a  show  of  courage, 
who  are  supported  one  way  and  another 
by  women.  It  might  be  humiliating  to 
know  just  how  many  men  live  by  the  la 
bors  of  their  wives.  And  what  would  be 
the  effect  upon  the  character  of  man  if  the 
choice,  and  the  responsibility  of  it,  and 
the  support  implied  by  it  in  marriage, 
were  generally  transferred  to  woman  ? 


FROCKS   AND    THE    STAGE 


HE  condescension 
to  literature  and 
to  the  stage  is  one  of  the 
notable  characteristics  of  this  agreeable 
time.  We  have  to  admit  that  literature 
is  rather  the  fashion,  without  the  violent 
presumption  that  the  author  and  the 
writer  have  the  same  social  position  that 
is  conferred  by  money,  or  by  the  mys 
terious  virtue  there  is  in  pedigree.  A 
person  does  not  lose  caste  by  using  the 
pen,  or  even  by  taking  the  not -needed 
pay  for  using  it.  To  publish  a  book  or 
to  have  an  article  accepted  by  a  maga 
zine  may  give  a  sort  of  social  distinc 
tion,  either  as  an  exhibition  of  a  certain 
unexpected  capacity  or  a  social  eccen 
tricity.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
it  has  become  the  fashion  to  write,  as 
it  used  to  be  to  dance  the  minuet  well, 


xo8 


or  to  use  the  broadsword,  or  to  stand  a 
gentlemanly  mill  with  a  renowned  bruiser. 
Of  course  one  ought  not  to  do  this  pro 
fessionally  exactly,  ought  not  to  prepare 
for  doing  it  by  study  and  severe  discipline, 
by  training  for  it  as  for  a  trade,  but  sim 
ply  to  toss  it  off  easily,  as  one  makes  a 
call,  or  pays  a  compliment,  or  drives  four- 
in-hand.  One  does  not  need  to  have  that 
interior  impulse  which  drives  a  poor  devil 
of  an  author  to  express  himself,  that 
something  to  say  which  torments  the  poet 
into  extreme  irritability  unless  he  can  be 
rid  of  it,  that  noble  hunger  for  fame  which 
comes  from  a  consciousness  of  the  pos 
session  of  vital  thought  and  emotion.  The 
beauty  of  this  condescension  to  literature 
of  which  we  speak  is  that  it  has  that  qual 
ity  of  spontaneity  that  does  not  presup 
pose  either  a  capacity  or  a  call.  There  is 
no  mystery  about  the  craft.  One  resolves 
to  write  a  book,  as  he  might  to  take  a 
journey  or  to  practise  on  the  piano,  and 
the  thing  is  done.  Everybody  can  write, 
at  least  everybody  does  write.  It  is  a 
wonderful  time  for  literature.  The  Queen 
of  England  writes  for  it,  the  Queen  of 


Roumania  writes  for  it,  the  Shah  of  Persia 
writes  for  it,  Lady  Brassey,  the  yachts 
woman,  wrote  for  it,  Congressmen  write 
for  it,  peers  write  for  it.  The  novel  is  the 
common  recreation  of  ladies  of  rank,  and 
where  is  the  young  woman  in  this  country 
who  has  not  tried  her  hand  at  a  romance  or 
made  a  cast  at  a  popular  magazine  ?  The 
effect  of  all  this  upon  literature  is  expan 
sive  and  joyous.  Superstition  about  any 
mystery  in  the  art  has  nearly  disappeared. 
It  is  a  common  observation  that  if  persons 
fail  in  everything  else,  if  they  are  fit  for 
nothing  else,  they  can  at  least  write.  It 
is  such  an  easy  occupation,  and  the  re 
muneration  is  in  such  disproportion  to  the 
expenditure!  Isn't  it  indeed  the  golden 
era  of  letters  ?  If  only  the  letters  were 
gold! 

If  there  is  any  such  thing  remaining  as 
a  guild  of  authors,  somewhere  on  the  back 
seats,  witnessing  this  marvellous  King 
dom  Come  of  Literature,  there  must  also 
be  a  little  bunch  of  actors,  born  for  the 
stage,  who  see  with  mixed  feelings  their 
arena  taken  possession  of  by  fairer  if  not 
more  competent  players.  These  players 


are  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  play 
actors  whom  the  Puritans  denounced,  nor 
with  those  trained  to  the  profession  in  the 
French  capital.  In  the  United  States  and 
in  England  we  are  born  to  enter  upon  any 
avocation,  thank  Heaven  !  without  train 
ing  for  it.  We  have  not  in  this  country 
any  such  obstacle  to  universal  success  as 
the  Theatre  Frangais,  but  Providence  has 
given  us,  for  wise  purposes  no  doubt,  Pri 
vate  Theatricals  (not  always  so  private  as 
they  should  be),  which  domesticate  the 
drama,  and  supply  the  stage  with  some  of 
the  most  beautiful  and  best  dressed  per 
formers  the  world  has  ever  seen.  What 
ever  they  may  say  of  it,  it  is  a  gallant  and 
a  susceptible  age,  and  all  men  bow  to  love 
liness,  and  all  women  recognize  a  talent 
for  clothes.  We  do  not  say  that  there  is 
not  such  a  thing  as  dramatic  art,  and  that 
there  are  not  persons  who  need  as  severe 
training  before  they  attempt  to  personate 
nature  in  art  as  the  painter  must  undergo 
who  attempts  to  transfer  its  features  to 
his  canvas.  But  the  taste  of  the  age 
must  be  taken  into  account.  The  public 
does  not  demand  that  an  actor  shall  come 


in  at  a  private  door  and  climb  a  steep 
staircase  to  get  to  the  stage.  When  a 
Star  from  the  Private  Theatricals  de 
scends  upon  the  boards,  with  the  arms 
of  Venus  and  the  throat  of  Juno,  and  a 
wardrobe  got  out  of  Paris  and  through  our 
stingy  Custom-house  in  forty  trunks,  the 
plodding  actor,  who  has  depended  upon 
art,  finds  out,  what  he  has  been  all  the 
time  telling  us,  that  all  the  world's  a  stage, 
and  men  and  women  merely  players.  Art 
is  good  in  its  way ;  but  what  about  a  per 
fect  figure?  and  is  not  dressing  an  art? 
Can  training  give  one  an  elegant  form, 
and  study  command  the  services  of  a  man 
milliner?  The  stage  is  broadened  out  and 
re -enforced  by  a  new  element.  What 
went  ye  out  for  to  see  ?  A  person  clad  in 
fine  raiment,  to  be  sure.  Some  of  the  crit 
ics  may  growl  a  Tittle,  and  hint  at  the  in 
vasion  of  art  by  fashionable  life,  but  the 
editor,  whose  motto  is  that  the  newspaper 
is  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  newspa 
per,  understands  what  is  required  in  this 
inspiring  histrionic  movement,  and  when 
a  lovely  woman  condescends  to  step  from 
the  drawing-room  to  the  stage  he  confines 


his  descriptions  to  her  person,  and  does 
not  bother  about  her  capacity;  and  instead 
of  wean-ing  us  with  a  list  of  her  plays  and 
performances,  he  gives  us  a  column  about 
her  dresses  in  beautiful  language  that 
shows  us  how  closely  allied  poetry  is  to 
tailoring.  Can  the  lady  act  ?  Why,  sim 
ple-minded,  she  has  nearly  a  hundred 
frocks,  each  one  a  dream,  a  conception  of 
genius,  a  vaporous  idea,  one  might  say, 
which  will  reveal  more  beauty  than  it 
hides,  and  teach  the  spectator  that  art  is 
simply  nature  adorned.  Rachel  in  all  her 
glory  was  not  adorned  like  one  of  these. 
We  have  changed  all  that.  The  actress 
used  to  have  a  rehearsal.  She  now  has 
an  "opening." 

Does  it  require  nowadays,  then,  no  spe 
cial  talent  or  gift  to  go  on  the  stage  ?  No 
more,  we  can  assure  our  readers,  than  it 
does  to  write  a  book.  But  homely  people 
and  poor  people  can  write  books.  As  yet 
they  cannot  act. 

• 

i-i!. 


ALTRUISM. 


HRISTMAS  is  supposed  to  be 
an  altruistic  festival.  Then,  if 
ever,  we  allow  ourselves  to  go  out  to 
others  in  sympathy  expressed  by  gifts 
and  good  wishes.  Then  self -forgetful- 
ness  in  the  happiness  of  others  becomes 
a  temporary  fashion.  And  we  find — do 
we  not  ? — the  indulgence  of  the  feeling  so 
remunerative  that  we  wish  there  were 
other  days  set  apart  to  it.  We  can  even 
understand  those  people  who  get  a  pri 
vate  satisfaction  in  being  good  on  other 
days  besides  Sunday.  There  is  a  com 
mon  notion  that  this  Christmas  altruistic 
sentiment  is  particularly  shown  towards 
the  unfortunate  and  the  dependent  by 
those  more  prosperous,  and  in  what  is 
called  a  better  social  position.  We  are 
exhorted  on  this  day  to  remember  the 


n6 

poor.  We  need  to  be  reminded  rather  to 
remember  the  rich,  the  lonely,  not-easy- 
to-be-satisfied  rich,  whom  we  do  not  al 
ways  have  with  us.  The  Drawer  never 
sees  a  very  rich  person  that  it  does  not 
long  to  give  him  something,  some  token, 
the  value  of  which  is  not  estimated  by  its 
cost,  that  should  be  a  consoling  evidence 
to  him  that  he  has  not  lost  sympathetic 
touch  with  ordinary  humanity.  There 
is  a  great  deal  of  sympathy  afloat  in  the 
world,  but  it  is  especially  shown  down 
ward  in  the  social  scale.  We  treat  our 
servants — supposing  that  we  are  society — 
better  than  we  treat  each  other.  If  we 
did  not,  they  would  leave  us.  We  are 
kinder  to  the  unfortunate  or  the  depend 
ent  than  to  each  other,  and  we  have  more 
charity  for  them. 

The  Drawer  is  not  indulging  in  any  in 
discriminate  railing  at  society.  There  is 
society  and  society.  There  is  that  unde 
fined  something,  more  like  a  machine 
than  an  aggregate  of  human  sensibilities, 
which  is  set  going  in  a  "  season,"  or  at  a 
watering-place,  or  permanently  selects  it 
self  for  certain  social  manifestations.  It 


117 

is  this  that  needs  a  missionary  to  infuse 
into  it  sympathy  and  charity.  If  it  were 
indeed  a  machine  and  not  made  up  of 
sensitive  personalities,  it  would  not  be 
to  its  members  so  selfish  and  cruel.  It 
would  be  less  an  ambitious  scramble  for 
place  and  favor,  less  remorseless  towards 
the  unsuccessful,  not  so  harsh  and  hard 
and  supercilious.  In  short,  it  would  be 
much  more  agreeable  if  it  extended  to  its 
own  members  something  of  the  consider 
ation  a«d  sympathy  that  it  gives  to  those 
it  regards  as  its  inferiors.  It  seems  to 
think  that  good-breeding  and  good  form 
are  separable  from  kindliness  and  sym 
pathy  and  helpfulness.  Tender-hearted 
and  charitable  enough  all  the  individuals 
of  this  "society"  are  to  persons  below 
them  in  fortune  or  position,  let  us  allow, 
but  how  are  they  to  each  other  ?  Noth 
ing  can  be  ruder  or  less  considerate  of 
the  feelings  of  others  than  much  of  that 
which  is  called  good  society,  and  this  is 
why  the  Drawer  desires  to  turn  the  al 
truistic  sentiment  of  the  world  upon  it 
in  this  season,  set  apart  by  common  con 
sent  for  usefulness.  Unfortunate  are  the 


n8 


fortunate  if  they  are  lifted  into  a  sphere 
which  is  sapless  of  delicacy  of  feeling  for 
its  own.  Is  this  an  intangible  matter? 
Take  hospitality,  for  instance.  Does  it 
consist  in  astonishing  the  invited,  in  over 
whelming  him  with  a  sense  of  your  own 
wealth,  or  felicity,  or  family,  or  clever 
ness  even ;  in  trying  to  absorb  him  in 
your  concerns,  your  successes,  your  pos 
sessions,  in  simply  what  interests  you  ? 
However  delightful  all  these  may  be,  it  is 
an  offence  to  his  individuality  to  insist 
that  he  shall  admire  at  the  point  of  the 
social  bayonet.  How  do  you  treat  the 
stranger?  Do  you  adapt  yourself  and 
your  surroundings  to  him,  or  insist  that 
he  shall  adapt  himself  to  you  ?  How 
often  does  the  stranger,  the  guest,  sit  in 
helpless  agony  in  your  circle  (all  of  whom 
know  each  other)  at  table  or  in  the  draw 
ing-room,  isolated  and  separate,  because 
all  the  talk  is  local  and  personal,  about 
your  little  world,  and  the  affairs  of  your 
clique,  and  your  petty  interests,  in  which 
he  or  she  cannot  possibly  join  ?  Ah  ! 
the  Sioux  Indian  would  not  be  so  cruel 
as  that  to  a  guest,  There  is  no  more  re- 


fined  torture  to  a  sensitive  person  than 
that.  Is  it  only  thoughtlessness  ?  It  is 
more  than  that.  It  is  a  want  of  sympathy 
of  the  heart,  or  it  is  a  lack  of  intelligence 
and  broad-minded  interest  in  affairs  of 
the  world  and  in  other  people.  It  is  this 
trait — absorption  in  self — pervading  so 
ciety  more  or  less,  that  makes  it  so  un 
satisfactory  to  most  people  in  it.  Just  a 
want  of  human  interest ;  people  do  not 
come  in  contact. 

Avid  pursuit  of  wealth,  or  what  is  called 
pleasure,  perhaps  makes  people  hard  to 
each  other,  and  infuses  into  the  higher 
social  life,  which  should  be  the  most  un 
selfish  and  enjoyable  life,  a  certain  vulgar 
ity,  similar  to  that  noticed  in  well-bred 
tourists  scrambling  for  the  seats  on  top  of 
a  mountain  coach.  A  person  of  refine 
ment  and  sensibility  and  intelligence,  cast 
into  the  company  of  the  select,  the  coun 
try-house,  the  radiant,  twelve-button  soci 
ety,  has  been  struck  with  infinite  pity  for 
it,  and  asks  the  Drawer  to  do  something 
about  it.  The  Drawer  cannot  do  any 
thing  about  it.  It  can  only  ask  the  pray 
ers  of  all  good  people  on  Christmas  Day 


for  the  rich.  As  we  said,  we  do  not  have 
them  with  us  always — they  are  here  to 
day,  they  are  gone  to  Canada  to-morrow. 
But  this  is,  of  course,  current  facetious- 
ness.  The  rich  are  as  good  as  anybody 
else,  according  to  their  lights,  and  if  what 
is  called  society  were  as  good  and  as  kind 
to  itself  as  it  is  to  the  poor,  it  would  be 
altogether  enviable.  We  are  not  of  those 
who  say  that  in  this  case  charity  would 
cover  a  multitude  of  sins,  but  a  diffusion 
in  society  of  the  Christmas  sentiment  of 
good-will  and  kindliness  to  itself  would 
tend  to  make  universal  the  joy  on  the  re 
turn  of  this  season. 


SOCIAL   CLEARING-HOUSE. 


HE  Drawer  would  like 
to  emphasize  the  noble,  self-sacrificing 
spirit  of  American  women.  There  are 
none  like  them  in  the  world.  They  take 
up  all  the  burdens  of  artificial  foreign 
usage,  where  social  caste  prevails,  and 
bear  them  with  a  heroism  worthy  of  a 
worse  cause.  They  indeed  represent  these 
usages  to  be  a  burden  almost  intolerable, 
and  yet  they  submit  to  them  with  a 
grace  and  endurance  all  their  own.  Prob 
ably  there  is  no  harder -worked  person 
than  a  lady  in  the  season,  let  us  say  in 
Washington,  where  the  etiquette  of  vis 
iting  is  carried  to  a  perfection  that  it 
does  not  reach  even  in  New  York,  Bos 
ton,  or  Philadelphia,  and  where  woman's 
effort  to  keep  the  social  fabric  together 
requires  more  expenditure  of  intellect 


and  of  physical  force  than  was  needed 
to  protect  the  capital  in  its  peril  a  quar 
ter  of  a  century  ago.  When  this  cruel 
war  is  over,  the  monument  to  the  wom 
en  who  perished  in  it  will  need  to  be 
higher  than  that  to  the  Father  of  his 
Country.  Merely  in  the  item  of  keeping 
an  account  of  the  visits  paid  and  due,  a 
woman  needs  a  book-keeper.  Only  to 
know  the  etiquette  of  how  and  when  and 
to  whom  and  in  what  order  the  visits  are 
to  be  paid  is  to  be  well  educated  in  a 
matter  that  assumes  the  first  importance 
in  her  life.  This  is,  however,  only  a  de 
tail  of  book-keeping  and  of  memory  ;  to 
pay  and  receive,  or  evade,  these  visits  of 
ceremony  is  a  work  which  men  can  ad 
mire  without  the  power  to  imitate ;  even 
on  the  supposition  that  a  woman  has  noth 
ing  else  to  do,  it  calls  for  our  humble  grati 
tude  and  a  recognition  of  the  largeness  of 
nature  that  can  put  aside  any  duties  to 
husband  or  children  in  devotion  to  the 
public  welfare.  The  futile  round  of  soci 
ety  life  while  it  lasts  admits  of  no  rival. 
It  seems  as  important  as  the  affairs  of  the 
government.  The  Drawer  is  far  from  say- 


ing  that  it  is  not.  Perhaps  no  one  can 
tell  what  confusion  would  fall  into  all  the 
political  relations  if  the  social  relations 
of  the  capital  were  not  kept  oiled  by  the 
system  of  exchange  of  fictitious  courte 
sies  among  the  women;  and  it  may  be 
true  that  society  at  large — men  are  so  apt, 
when  left  alone,  to  relapse  —  would  fall 
into  barbarism  if  our  pasteboard  conven 
tions  were  neglected.  All  honor  to  the 
self-sacrifice  of  woman  ! 

What  a  beautiful  civilization  ours  is, 
supposed  to  be  growing  in  intelligence 
and  simplicity,  and  yet  voluntarily  taking 
upon  itself  this  artificial  burden  in  an  al 
ready  overtaxed  life!  The  angels  in  heav 
en  must  admire  and  wonder.  The  cynic 
wants  to  know  what  is  gained  for  any 
rational  being  when  a  city  full  of  women 
undertake  to  make  and  receive  formal 
visits  with  persons  whom  for  the  most 
part  they  do  not  wish  to  see.  What  is 
gained,  he  asks,  by  leaving  cards  with 
all  these  people  and  receiving  their  cards? 
When  a  woman  makes  her  tedious  rounds, 
why  is  she  always  relieved  to  find  people 
not  in  ?  When  she  can  count  upon  her 


ten  fingers  the  people  she  wants  to  see, 
why  should  she  pretend  to  want  to  see 
the  others  ?  Is  any  one  deceived  by  it  ? 
Does  anybody  regard  it  as  anything  but 
a  sham  and  a  burden?  Much  the  cynic 
knows  about  it !  Is  it  not  necessary  to 
keep  up  what  is  called  society  ?  Is  it  not 
necessary  to  have  an  authentic  list  of 
pasteboard  acquaintances  to  invite  to  the 
receptions  ?  And  what  would  become  of 
us  without  Receptions?  Everybody  likes 
to  give  them.  Everybody  flocks  to  them 
with  much  alacrity.  When  society  calls 
the  roll,  we  all  know  the  penalty  of  being 
left  out.  Is  there  any  intellectual  or  phys 
ical  pleasure  equal  to  that  of  jamming  so 
many  people  into  a  house  that  they  can 
hardly  move,  and  treating  them  to  a  Babel 
of  noises  in  which  no  one  can  make  her 
self  heard  without  screaming?  There  is 
nothing  like  a  reception  in  any  uncivilized 
country.  It  is  so  exhilarating !  When  a 
dozen  or  a  hundred  people  are  gathered 
together  in  a  room,  they  all  begin  to  raise 
their  voices  and  to  shout  like  pool-sellers 
in  the  noble  rivalry  of  "  warious  lang- 
widges,"  rasping  their  throats  into  bron- 


I27 

chitis  in  the  bidding  of  the  conversational 
ring.  If  they  spoke  low,  or  even  in  the 
ordinary  tone,  conversation  would  be  pos 
sible.  But  then  it  would  not  be  a  recep 
tion,  as  we  understand  it.  We  cannot 
neglect  anywhere  any  of  the  pleasures  of 
our  social  life.  We  train  for  it  in  lower 
assemblies.  Half  a  dozen  women  in  a 
"  call  "  are  obliged  to  shout,  just  for  prac 
tice,  so  that  they  can  be  heard  by  every 
body  in  the  neighborhood  except  them 
selves.  Do  not  men  do  the  same?  If 
they  do,  it  only  shows  that  men  also  are 
capable  of  the  higher  civilization. 

But  does  society — that  is,  the  inter 
course  of  congenial  people — depend  upon 
the  elaborate  system  of  exchanging  calls 
with  hundreds  of  people  who  are  not  con 
genial  ?  Such  thoughts  will  sometimes 
come  by  a  winter  fireside  of  rational-talk 
ing  friends,  or  at  a  dinner-party  not  too 
large  for  talk  without  a  telephone,  or  in 
the  summer-time  by  the  sea,  or  in  the  cot 
tage  in  the  hills,  when  the  fever  of  social 
life  has  got  down  to  a  normal  tempera 
ture.  We  fancy  that  sometimes  people 
will  give  way  to  a  real  enjoyment  of  life 


128 


and  that  human  intercourse  will  throw 
off  this  artificial  and  wearisome  parade, 
and  that  if  women  look  back  with  pride, 
as  they  may,  upon  their  personal  achieve 
ments  and  labors,  they  will  also  regard 
them  with  astonishment.  Women,  we 
read  every  day,  long  for  the  rights  and 
privileges  of  men,  and  the  education  and 
serious  purpose  in  life  of  men.  And  yet, 
such  is  the  sweet  self-sacrifice  of  their 
nature,  they  voluntarily  take  on  burdens 
which  men  have  never  assumed,  and  which 
they  would  speedily  cast  off  if  they  had. 
What  should  we  say  of  men  if  they  con 
sumed  half  their  time  in  paying  formal  calls 
upon  each  other  merely  for  the  sake  of 
paying  calls,  and  were  low-spirited  if  they 
did  not  receive  as  many  cards  as  they  had 
dealt  out  to  society  ?  Have  they  not  the 
time  ?  Have  women  more  time  ?  and  if 
they  have,  why  should  they  spend  it  in 
this  Sisyphus  task  ?  Would  the  social  ma 
chine  go  to  pieces — the  inquiry  is  made 
in  good  faith,  and  solely  for  information 
— if  they  made  rational  business  for  them 
selves  to  be  attended  to,  or  even  if  they 
gave  the  time  now  given  to  calls  they 


hate  to  reading  and  study,  and  to  making 
their  household  civilizing  centres  of  inter 
course  and  enjoyment,  and  paid  visits  from 
some  other  motive  than  "  clearing  off  their 
list?"  If  all  the  artificial  round  of  calls 
and  cards  should  tumble  down,  what  val 
uable  thing  would  be  lost  out  of  anybody's 
life? 

The  question  is  too  vast  for  the  Drawer, 
but  as  an  experiment  in  sociology  it  would 
like  to  see  the  system  in  abeyance  for  one 
season.  If  at  the  end  of  it  there  had  not 
been  just  as  much  social  enjoyment  as 
before,  and  there  were  not  fewer  women 
than  usual  down  with  nervous  prostration, 
it  would  agree  to  start  at  its  own  expense 
a  new  experiment,  to  wit,  a  kind  of  Social 
Clearing-House,  in  which  all  cards  should 
be  delivered  and  exchanged,  and  all  social 
debts  of  this  kind  be  balanced  by  experi 
enced  book-keepers,  so  that  the  reputa 
tion  of  everybody  for'propriety  and  con 
ventionality  should  be  just  as  good  as  it 
is  now. 

9 


PO 


.NY  people  suppose  that  it  is  the 
h  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  dine 
if  you  can  get  plenty  to  eat.  This 
error  is  the  foundation  of  much 
social  misery.  The  world  that  never 
dines,  and  fancies  it  has  a  grievance  jus 
tifying  anarchy  on  that  account,  does  not 
know  how  much  misery  it  escapes.  A 
great  deal  has  been  written  about  the  art 
of  dining.  From  time  to  time  geniuses 
have  appeared  who  knew  how  to  compose 
a  dinner ;  indeed,  the  art  of  doing  it  can  be 
learned,  as  well  as  the  art  of  cooking  and 
serving  it.  It  is  often  possible,  also,  un 
der  extraordinarily  favorable  conditions, 
to  select  a  company  congenial  and  varied 
and  harmonious  enough  to  dine  together 
successfully.  The  tact  for  getting  the 
right  people  together  is  perhaps  rarer 


134 


than  the  art  of  composing  the  dinner. 
But  it  exists.  And  an  elegant  table  with 
a  handsome  and  brilliant  company  about 
it  is  a  common  conjunction  in  this  coun 
try.  Instructions  are  not  wanting  as  to 
the  shape  of  the  table  and  the  size  of  the 
party ;  it  is  universally  admitted  that  the 
number  must  be  small.  The  big  dinner 
parties  which  are  commonly  made  to 
pay  off  social  debts  are  generally  of  the 
sort  that  one  would  rather  contribute  to 
in  money  than  in  personal  attendance. 
When  the  dinner  is  treated  as  a  means 
of  discharging  obligations,  it  loses  all 
character,  and  becomes  one  of  the  social 
inflictions.  While  there  is  nothing  in  so 
cial  intercourse  so  agreeable  and  inspir 
ing  as  a  dinner  of  the  right  sort,  society 
has  invented  no  infliction  equal  to  a  large 
dinner  that  does  not  "  go,"  as  the  phrase 
is.  Why  it  does  not  go  when  the  viands 
are  good  and  the  company  is  bright,  is 
one  of  the  acknowledged  mysteries. 

There  need  be  no  mystery  about  it. 
The  social  instinct  and  the  social  habit 
are  wanting  to  a  great  many  people  of 
uncommon  intelligence  and  cultivation 


135 

—that  sort  of  flexibility  or  adaptability 
that  makes  agreeable  society.  But  this 
even  does  not  account  for  the  failure  of 
so  many  promising  dinners.  The  secret  of 
this  failure  always  is  that  the  conversation 
is  not  general.  The  sole  object  of  the  din 
ner  is  talk— at  least  in  the  United  States, 
where  "  good  eating"  is  pretty  common, 
however  it  may  be  in  England,  whence 
come  rumors  occasionally  of  accomplish 
ed  men  who  decline  to  be  interrupted  by 
the  frivolity  of  talk  upon  the  appearance 
of  favorite  dishes.  And  private  talk  at  a 
table  is  not  the  sort  that  saves  a  dinner ; 
however  good  it  is,  it  always  kills  it.  The 
chance  of  arrangement  is  that  the  people 
who  would  like  to  talk  together  are  not 
neighbors ;  and  if  they  are,  they  exhaust 
each  other  to  weariness  in  an  hour,  at 
least  of  topics  which  can  be  talked  about 
with  the  risk  of  being  overheard.  A  duet 
to  be  agreeable  must  be  to  a  certain  ex 
tent  confidential,  and  the  dinner -table 
duet  admits  of  little  except  generalities, 
and  generalities  between  two  have  their 
limits  of  entertainment.  Then  there  is 
the  awful  possibility  that  the  neighbors  at 


table  may  have  nothing  to  say  to  each  oth 
er  ;  and  in  the  best-selected  company  one 
may  sit  beside  a  stupid  man — that  is,  stu 
pid  for  the  purpose  of  a  tete-a-tete.  But 
this  is  not  the  worst  of  it.  No  one  can 
talk  well  without  an  audience  ;  no  one  is 
stimulated  to  say  bright  things  except  by 
the  attention  and  questioning  and  inter 
est  of  other  minds.  There  is  little  inspi 
ration  in  side  talk  to  one  or  two.  Nobody 
ought  to  go  to  a  dinner  who  is  not  a  good 
listener,  and,  if  possible,  an  intelligent  one. 
To  listen  with  a  show  of  intelligence  is  a 
great  accomplishment.  It  is  not  absolute 
ly  essential  that  there  should  be  a  great 
talker  or  a  number  of  good  talkers  at  a 
dinner  if  all  are  good  listeners,  and  able  to 
"  chip  in"  a  little  to  the  general  talk  that 
springs  up.  For  the  success  of  the  din 
ner  does  not  necessarily  depend  upon  the 
talk  being  brilliant,  but  it  does  depend 
upon  its  being  general,  upon  keeping  the 
ball  rolling  round  the  table  ;  the  old-fash 
ioned  game  becomes  flat  when  the  balls  all 
disappear  into  private  pockets.  There  are 
dinners  where  the  object  seems  to  be  to 
pocket  all  the  balls  as  speedily  as  possible. 


We  have  learned  that  that  is  not  the  best 
game  ;  the  best  game  is  when  you  not  only 
depend  on  the  carom,  but  in  going  to  the 
cushion  before  you  carom  ;  that  is  to  say, 
including  the  whole  table,  and  making 
things  lively.  The  hostess  succeeds  who 
is  able  to  excite  this  general  play  of  all  the 
forces  at  the  table,  even  using  the  silent 
but  not  non-elastic  material  as  cushions,  if 
one  may  continue  the  figure. 

Is  not  this,  O  brothers  and  sisters,  an 
evil  under  the  sun,  this  dinner  as  it  is  apt 
to  be  conducted  ?  Think  of  the  weary 
hours  you  have  given  to  a  rite  that  should 
be  the  highest  social  pleasure  !  How  of 
ten  when  a  topic  is  started  that  promises 
well,  and  might  come  to  something  in  a 
general  exchange  of-  wit  and  fancy,  and 
some  one  begins  to  speak  on  it,  and  speak 
very  well,  too,  have  you  not  had  a  lady  at 
your  side  cut  in  and  give  you  her  views  on 
it — views  that  might  be  amusing  if  thrown 
out  into  the  discussion,  but  which  are  sim 
ply  impertinent  as  an  interruption  !  How 
often  when  you  have  tried  to  get  a  "  rise" 
out  of  somebody  opposite  have  you  not 
had  your  neighbor  cut  in  across  you  with 


'38 


some  private  depressing  observation  to 
your  next  neighbor !  Private  talk  at  a  din 
ner-table  is  like  private  chat  at  a  parlor 
musical,  only  it  is  more  fatal  to  the  gen 
eral  enjoyment.  There  is  a  notion  that  the 
art  of  conversation,  the  ability  to  talk  well, 
has  gone  out.  That  is  a  great  mistake. 
Opportunity  is  all  that  is  needed.  There 
must  be  the  inspiration  of  the  clash  of 
minds  and  the  encouragement  of  good 
listening.  In  an  evening  round  the  fire, 
when  couples  begin  to  whisper  or  talk 
low  to  each  other,  it  is  time  to  put  out  the 
lights.  Inspiring  interest  is  gone.  The 
most  brilliant  talker  in  the  world  is  dumb. 
People  whose  idea  of  a  dinner  is  private 
talk  between  seat-neighbors  should  limit 
the  company  to  two.  They  have  no  right 
to  spoil  what  can  be  the  most  agreea 
ble  social  institution  that  civilization  has 
evolved. 


NATURALIZATION. 


S  it  possible  for  a  person 
to  be  entirely  natural 
ized  ? — that  is,  to  be  denationalized,  to  cast 
off  the  prejudice  and  traditions  of  one 
country  and  take  up  those  of  another ;  to 
give  up  what  may  be  called  the  instinctive 
tendencies  of  one  race  and  take  up  those 
of  another.  It  is  easy  enough  to  swear 
off  allegiance  to  a  sovereign  or  a  govern 
ment,  and  to  take  on  in  intention  new 
political  obligations,  but  to  separate  one's 
self  from  the  sympathies  into  which  he 
was  born  is  quite  another  affair.  One  is 
likely  to  remain  in  the  inmost  recesses 
of  his  heart  an  alien,  and  as  a  final  expres 
sion  of  his  feeling  to  hoist  the  green  flag, 
or  the  dragon,  or  the  cross  of  St.  George. 
Probably  no  other  sentiment  is  so  strong 
in  a  man  as  that  of  attachment  to  his  own 


soil  and  people,  a  sub-sentiment  always 
remaining,  whatever  new  and  unbreakable 
attachments  he  may  form.  One  can  be 
very  proud  of  his  adopted  country,  and 
brag  for  it,  and  fight  for  it ;  but  lying  deep 
in  a  man's  nature  is  something,  no  doubt, 
that  no  oath  nor  material  interest  can 
change,  and  that  is  never  naturalized. 
We  see  this  experiment  in  America  more 
than  anywhere  else,  because  here  meet 
more  different  races  than  anywhere  else 
with  the  serious  intention  of  changing 
their  nationality.  And  we  have  a  notion 
that  there  is  something  in  our  atmos 
phere,  or  opportunities,  or  our  govern 
ment,  that  makes  this  change  more  nat 
ural  and  reasonable  than  it  has  been 
anywhere  else  in  history.  It  is  always  a 
surprise  to  us  when  a  born  citizen  of  the 
United  States  changes  his  allegiance,  but 
it  seems  a  thing  of  course  that  a  person 
of  any  other  country  should,  by  an  oath, 
become  a  good  American,  and  we  expect 
that  the  act  will  work  a  sudden  change 
in  him  equal  to  that  wrought  in  a  man  by 
what  used  to  be  called  a  conviction  of  sin. 
We  expect  that  he  will  not  only  come  into 


our  family,  but  that  he  will  at  once  assume 
all  its  traditions  and  dislikes,  that  what 
ever  may  have  been  his  institutions  or  his 
race  quarrels,  the  moving  influence  of  his 
life  hereafter  will  be  the  "  Spirit  of  '76." 

What  is  this  naturalization,  however, 
but  a  sort  of  parable  of  human  life?  Are 
we  not  always  trying  to  adjust  ourselves 
to  new  relations,  to  get  naturalized  into  a 
new  family  ?  Does  one  ever  do  it  entire 
ly  ?  And  how  much  of  the  lonesomeness 
of  life  comes  from  the  failure  to  do  it ! 
It  is  a  tremendous  experiment,  we  all  ad 
mit,  to  separate  a  person  from  his  race, 
from  his  country,  from  his  climate,  and 
the  habits  of  his  part  of  the  country,  by 
marriage;  it  is  only  an  experiment  differ 
ing  in  degree  to  introduce  him  by  mar 
riage  into  a  new  circle  of  kinsfolk.  Is  he 
ever  anything  but  a  sort  of  tolerated,  crit 
icised,  or  admired  alien  ?  Does  the  time 
ever  come  when  the  distinction  ceases  be 
tween  his  family  and  hers  ?  They  say  love 
is  stronger  than  death.  It  may  also  be 
stronger  than  family — while  it  lasts  ;  but 
was  there  ever  a  woman  yet  whose  most 
ineradicable  feeling  was  not  the  sentiment 


of  family  and  blood,  a  sort  of  base-line  in 
life  upon  which  trouble  and  disaster  al 
ways  throw  her  back  ?    Does  she  ever  lose 
the  instinct  of  it  ?    We  used  to  say  in  jest 
that  a  patriotic  man  was  always  willing  to 
sacrifice  his  wife's  relations  in  war;   but 
his  wife  took  a  different  view  of  it ;  and 
when  it  becomes  a  question  of  office,  is  it 
not  the  wife's  relations  who  get  them  ? 
To  be  sure,  Ruth   said,  thy  people  shall 
be  my  people,  and  where  thou  goest  I  will 
go,  and  all  that,  and  this  beautiful  senti 
ment  has  touched  all  time,  and  man  has 
got  the  historic  notion  that  he  is  the  head 
of  things.     But  is  it  true  that  a  woman  is 
ever  really  naturalized  ?     Is  it  in  her  nat 
ure  to  be?     Love  will  carry  her  a  great 
way,  and  to  far  countries,  and  to  many 
endurances,  and  her  capacity  of  self-sacri 
fice  is  greater  than  man's  ;  but  would  she 
ever  be  entirely  happy  torn  from  her  kin 
dred,  transplanted  from  the  associations 
and  interlacings  of  her  family  life?    Does 
there  anything  really  take  the  place  of 
that  entire  ease  and  confidence  that  one 
has  in  kin,  or  the  inborn  longing  for  their 
sympathy  and  society?     There  are  two 


MS 

theories  about  life,  as  about  naturaliza 
tion  :  one  is  that  love  is  enough,  that  in 
tention  is  enough  ;  the  other  is  that  the 
whole  circle  of  human  relations  and  at 
tachments  is  to  be  considered  in  a  mar 
riage,  and  that  in  the  long-run  the  ques 
tion  of  family  is  a  preponderating  one. 
Does  the  gate  of  divorce  open  more  fre 
quently  from  following  the  one  theory 
than  the  other?  If  we  were  to  adopt  the 
notion  that  marriage  is  really  a  tremen 
dous  act  of  naturalization,  of  absolute  sur 
render  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  the 
deepest  sentiments  and  hereditary  ten 
dencies,  would  there  be  so  many  hasty  mar 
riages—slip-knots  tied  by  one  justice  to 
be  undone  by  another  ?  The  Drawer  did 
not  intend  to  start  such  a  deep  question 
as  this.  Hosts  of  people  are  yearly  nat 
uralized  in  this  country,  not  from  any  love 
of  its  institutions,  but  because  they  can 
more  easily  get  a  living  here,  and  they 
really  surrender  none  of  their  hereditary 
ideas,  and  it  is  only  human  nature  that 
marriages  should  be  made  with  like  pur 
pose  and  like  reservations.  These  reser 
vations  do  not,  however,  make  the  best 


i46 


citizens  or  the  most  happy  marriages. 
Would  it  be  any  better  if  country  lines 
were  obliterated,  and  the  great  brother 
hood  of  peoples  were  established,  and 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  patriotism 
or  family,  and  marriage  were  as  free  to 
make  and  unmake  as  some  people  think 
it  should  be?  Very  likely,  if  we  could 
radically  change  human  nature.  But  hu 
man  nature  is  the  most  obstinate  thing 
that  the  International  Conventions  have 
to  deal  with. 


ART   OF   GOVERNING. 


E   was   saying, 

when  he   awoke 

one  morning,  "  I 
were  governor  of 
island,  and  had 
nothing  to  do  but  to  get 
up  and  govern."  It  was 
an  observation  quite  worthy  of  him,  and 
one  of  general  application,  for  there  are 
many  men  who  find  it  very  difficult  to 
get  a  living  on  their  own  resources,  to 
whom  it  would  be  comparatively  easy  to 
be  a  very  fair  sort  of  governor.  Every 
body  who  has  no  official  position  or  rou 
tine  duty  on  a  salary  knows  that  the  most 
trying  moment  in  the  twenty-four  hours 
is  that  in  which  he  emerges  from  the  ob 
livion  of  sleep  and  faces  life.  Everything 
perplexing  tumbles  in  upon  him,  all  the 


'50 

possible  vexations  of  the  day  rise  up  be 
fore  him,  and  he  is  little  less  than  a  hero 
if  he  gets  up  cheerful. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  people 
crave  office,  some  salaried  position,  in  or 
der  to  escape  the  anxieties,  the  personal 
responsibilities,  of  a  single-handed  strug 
gle  with  the  world.  It  must  be  much 
easier  to  govern  an  island  than  to  carry 
on  almost  any  retail  business.  When  the 
governor  wakes  in  the  morning  he  thinks 
first  of  his  salary ;  he  has  not  the  least 
anxiety  about  his  daily  bread  or  the  sup 
port  of  his  family.  His  business  is  all 
laid  out  for  him  ;  he  has  not  to  create  it. 
Business  comes  to  him  ;  he  does  not  have 
to  drum  for  it.  His  day  is  agreeably,  even 
if  sympathetically,  occupied  with  the  trou 
bles  of  other  people,  and  nothing  is  so 
easy  to  bear  as  the  troubles  of  other  peo 
ple.  After  he  has  had  his  breakfast,  and 
read  over  the  "  Constitution,"  he  has  noth 
ing  to  do  but  to  "  govern  "  for  a  few  hours, 
that  is,  to  decide  about  things  on  general 
principles,  and  with  little  personal  appli 
cation,  and  perhaps  about  large  concerns 
which  nobody  knows  anything  about,  and 


which  are  much  easier  to  dispose  of  than 
the  perplexing  details  of  private  life.  He 
has  to  vote  several  times  a  day  ;  for  giv 
ing  a  decision  is  really  casting  a  vote  ;  but 
that  is  much  easier  than  to  scratch  around 
in  all  the  anxieties  of  a  retail  business. 
Many  men  who  would  make  very  respect 
able  Presidents  of  the  United  States  could 
not  successfully  run  a  retail  grocery  store- 
The  anxieties  of  the  groceiy  would  wear 
them  out.  For  consider  the  varied  ability 
that  the  grocery  requires — the  foresight 
about  the  markets,  to  take  advantage  of 
an  eighth  per  cent,  off  or  on  here  and 
there ;  the  vigilance  required  to  keep  a 
"  full  line  "  and  not  overstock,  to  dispose 
of  goods  before  they  spoil  or  the  popular 
taste  changes ;  the  suavity  and  integrity 
and  duplicity  and  fairness  and  adaptability 
needed  to  get  customers  and  keep  them ; 
the  power  to  bear  the  daily  and  hourly 
worry  ;  the  courage  to  face  the  ever-pres 
ent  spectre  of  "  failure,"  which  is  said  to 
come  upon  ninety  merchants  in  a  hun 
dred  ;  the  tact  needed  to  meet  the  whims 
and  the  complaints  of  patrons,  and  the 
difficulty  of  getting  the  patrons  who  grum- 


152 

ble  most  to  pay  in  order  to  satisfy  the 
creditors.  When  the  retail  grocer  wak 
ens  in  the  morning  he  feels  that  his  busi 
ness  is  not  going  to  come  to  him  spon 
taneously  ;  he  thinks  of  his  rivals,  of  his 
perilous  stock,  of  his  debts  and  delinquent 
customers.  He  has  no  "  Constitution  "  to 
go  by,  nothing  but  his  wits  and  energy  to 
set  against  the  world  that  day,  and  every 
day  the  struggle  and  the  anxiety  are  the 
same.  What  a  number  of  details  he  has 
to  carry  in  his  head  (consider,  for  instance, 
how  many  different  kinds  of  cheese  there 
are,  and  how  different  people  hate  and 
love  the  same  kind),  and  how  keen  must 
be  his  appreciation  of  the  popular  taste  ! 
The  complexities  and  annoyances  of  his 
business  are  excessive,  and  he  cannot  af 
ford  to  make  many  mistakes;  if  he  does, 
he  will  lose  his  business,  and  when  a  man 
fails  in  business  (honestly),  he  loses  his 
nerve,  and  his  career  is  ended.  It  is  sim 
ply  amazing,  when  you  consider  it,  the 
amount  of  talent  shown  in  what  are  called 
the  ordinary  businesses  of  life. 

It  has  been  often  remarked  with  how  lit 
tle  wisdom  the  world  is  governed.     That 


'53 

is  the  reason  it  is  so  easy  to  govern.  "  Un 
easy  lies  the  head  that  wears  a  crown  " 
does  not  refer  to  the  discomfort  of  wear 
ing  it,  but  to  the  danger  of  losing  it,  and 
of  being  put  back  upon  one's  native  re 
sources,  having  to  run  a  grocery  or  to 
keep  school.  Nobody  is  in  such  a  pitiable 
plight  as  a  monarch  or  politician  out  of 
business.  It  is  very  difficult  for  either  to 
get  a  living.  A  man'  who  has  once  en 
joyed  the  blessed  feeling  of  awaking  every 
morning  with  the  thought  that  he  has  a 
certain  salary  despises  the  idea  of  having 
to  drum  up  a  business  by  his  own  talents. 
It  does  not  disturb  the  waking  hour  at  all 
to  think  that  a  deputation  is  waiting  in 
the  next  room  about  a  post-office  in  In 
diana  or  about  the  codfish  in  Newfound 
land  waters — the  man  can  take  a  second 
nap  on  any  such  affair ;  but  if  he  knows 
that  the  living  of  himself  and  family  that 
day  depends  upon  his  activity  and  intel 
ligence,  uneasy  lies  his  head.  There  is 
something  so  restful  and  easy  about  pub 
lic  business  !  It  is  so  simple  !  Take  the 
average  Congressman.  The  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury  sends  in  an  elaborate  report 


— a  budget,  in  fact — involving  a  complete 
and  harmonious  scheme  of  revenue  and 
expenditure.  Must  the  Congressman  read 
it  ?  No  ;  it  is  not  necessary  to  do  that ; 
he  only  cares  for  practical  measures.  Or 
a  financial  bill  is  brought  in.  Does  he 
study  that  bill  ?  He  hears  it  read,  at  least 
by  title.  Does  he  take  pains  to  inform 
himself  by  reading  and  conversation  with 
experts  upon  its  probable  effect  ?  Or  an 
international  copyright  law  is  proposed,  a 
measure  that  will  relieve  the  people  of  the 
United  States  from  the  world-wide  repu 
tation  of  sneaking  meanness  towards  for 
eign  authors.  Does  he  examine  the  sub 
ject,  and  try  to  understand  it  ?  That  is 
not  necessary.  Or  it  is  a  question  of  tariff. 
He  is  to  vote  "  yes  "  or  "  no  "  on  these  pro 
posals.  It  is  not  necessary  for  him  to  mas 
ter  these  subjects,  but  it  is  necessary  for 
him  to  know  how  to  vote.  And  how  does 
he  find  out  that  ?  In  the  first  place,  by 
inquiring  what  effect  the  measure  will 
have  upon  the  chance  of  election  of  the 
man  he  thinks  will  be  nominated  for  Presi 
dent,  and  in  the  second  place,  what  effect 
his  vote  will  have  on  his  own  re-election. 


'55 


Thus  the  principles  of  legislation  become 
very  much  simplified,  and  thus  it  happens 
that  it  is  comparatively  so  much  easier  to 
govern  than  it  is  to  run  a  grocery  store. 


LOVE   OF   DISPLAY. 


T  is  fortunate  that  a  passion 
for  display  is  implanted  in 
human  nature ;  and  if  we 
owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to 
anybody,  it  is  to  those  who 
make  the  display  for  us. 
It  would  be  such  a  dull, 
colorless  world  without  it ! 
We  try  in  vain  to  imagine 
a  city  without  brass  bands, 
and  military  marchings, 
and  processions  of  societies 
in  regalia  and  banners  and 
resplendent  uniforms,  and 
gayly  caparisoned  horses, 
and  men  clad  in  red  and 
yellow  and  blue  and  gray 
and  gold  and  silver  and  feathers,  moving 
in  beautiful  lines,  proudly  wheeling  with 
step  elate  upon  some  responsive  human 
being  as  axis,  deploying,  opening,  and 
closing  ranks  in  exquisite  precision  to 
the  strains  of  martial  music,  to  the  thump 
of  the  drum  and  the  scream  of  the  fife, 


i6o 


going  away  down  the  street  with  nodding 
plumes,  heads  erect,  the  very  port  of  hero 
ism.  There  is  scarcely  anything  in  the 
world  so  inspiring  "as  that.  And  the  self- 
sacrifice  of  it !  What  will  not  men  do 
and  endure  to  gratify  their  fellows  !  And 
in  the  heat  of  summer,  too,  when  most 
we  need  something  to  cheer  us !  The 
Drawer  saw,  with  feelings  that  cannot  be 
explained,  a  noble  company  of  men,  the 
pride  of  their  city,  all  large  men,  all  fat 
men,  all  dressed  alike,  but  each  one  as 
beautiful  as  anything  that  can  be  seen  on 
the  stage,  perspiring  through  the  gala 
streets  of  another  distant  city,  the  admi 
ration  of  crowds  of  huzzaing  men  and 
women  and  boys,  following  another  com 
pany  as  resplendent  as  itself,  every  man 
bearing  himself  like  a  hero,  despising  the 
heat  and  the  dust,  conscious  only  of  do 
ing  his  duty.  We  make  a  great  mistake 
if  we  suppose  it  is  a  feeling  of  ferocity 
that  sets  these  men  tramping  about  in 
gorgeous  uniform,  in  mud  or  dust,  in  rain 
or  under  a  broiling  sun.  They  have  no 
desire  to  kill  anybody.  Out  of  these  re 
splendent  clothes  they  are  much  like  other 


people ;  only  they  have  a  nobler  spirit, 
that  which  leads  them  to  endure  hard 
ships  for  the  sake  of  pleasing  others. 
They  differ  in  degree,  though  not  in  kind, 
from  those  orders,  for  keeping  secrets,  or 
for  encouraging  a  distaste  for  strong  drink, 
which  also  wear  bright  and  attractive  re 
galia,  and  go  about  in  processions,  with 
banners  and  music,  and  a  pomp  that  can 
not  be  distinguished  at  a  distance  from 
real  war.  It  is  very  fortunate  that  men 
do  like  to  march  about  in  ranks  and  lines, 
even  without  any  distinguishing  apparel. 
The  Drawer  has  seen  hundreds  of  citi 
zens  in  a  body,  going  about  the  country  on 
an  excursion,  parading  through  town  after 
town,  with  no  other  distinction  of  dress 
than  a  uniform  high  white  hat,  who  car 
ried  joy  and  delight  wherever  they  went. 
The  good  of  this  display  cannot  be  reck 
oned  in  figures.  Even  a  funeral  is  com 
paratively  dull  without  the  military  band 
and  the  four-and-four  processions,  and 
the  cities  where  these  resplendent  cor 
teges  of  woe  are  of  daily  occurrence  are 
cheerful  cities.  The  brass  band  itself, 
when  we  consider  it  philosophically,  is 


162 


one  of  the  most  striking  things  in  our 
civilization.  We  admire  its  commonly 
splendid  clothes,  its  drums  and  cymbals 
and  braying  brass,  but  it  is  the  impartial 
spirit  with  which  it  lends  itself  to  our 
varying  wants  that  distinguishes  it.  It 
will  not  do  to  say  that  it  has  no  principles, 
for  nobody  has  so  many,  or  is  so  impartial 
in  exercising  them.  It  is  equally  ready 
to  play  at  a  festival  or  a  funeral,  a  picnic 
or  an  encampment,  for  the  sons  of  war  or 
the  sons  of  temperance,  and  it  is  equally 
willing  to  express  the  feeling  of  a  Demo 
cratic  meeting  or  a  Republican  gather 
ing,  and  impartially  blows  out  "  Dixie  "  or 
"  Marching  through  Georgia,"  "  The  Girl 
I  Left  Behind  Me  "  or  "  My  Country,  'tis 
of  Thee."  It  is  equally  piercing  and  ex 
citing  for  St.  Patrick  or  the  Fourth  of 
July. 

There  are  cynics  who  think  it  strange 
that  men  are  willing  to  dress  up  in  fantas 
tic  uniform  and  regalia  and  march  about 
in  sun  and  rain  to  make  a  holiday  for 
their  countrymen,  but  the  cynics  are  un 
grateful,  and  fail  to  credit  human  nature 
with  its  trait  of  self-sacrifice,  and  they  do 


not  at  all  comprehend  our  civilization.  It 
was  doubted  at  one  time  whether  the 
freedman  and  the  colored  man  generally 
in  the  republic  was  capable  of  the  higher 
civilization.  This  doubt  has  all  been  re 
moved.  No  other  race  takes  more  kindly 
to  martial  and  civic  display  than  it.  No 
one  has  a  greater  passion  for  societies 
and  uniforms  and  regalias  and  banners, 
and  the  pomp  of  marchings  and  proces 
sions  and  peaceful  war.  The  negro  nat 
urally  inclines  to  the  picturesque,  to  the 
flamboyant,  to  vivid  colors  and  the  trap 
pings  of  office  that  give  a  man  distinc 
tion.  He  delights  in  the  drum  and  the 
trumpet,  and  so  willing  is  he  to  add  to 
what  is  spectacular  and  pleasing  in  life 
that  he  would  spend  half  his  time  in  pa 
rading.  His  capacity  for  a  holiday  is  prac 
tically  unlimited.  He  has  not  yet  the 
means  to  indulge  his  taste,  and  perhaps 
his  taste  is  not  yet ''equal  to  his  means, 
but  there  is  no  question  of  his  adaptabil 
ity  to  the  sort  of  display  which  is  so  pleas 
ing  to  the  greater  part  of  the  human  race, 
and  which  contributes  so  much  to  the 
brightness  and  cheerfulness  of  this  world. 


We  cannot  all  have  decorations,  and  can 
not  all  wear  uniforms,  or  even  regalia,  and 
some  of  us  have  little  time  for  going 
about  in  military  or  civic  processions,  but 
we  all  like  to  have  our  streets  put  on  a 
holiday  appearance ;  and  we  cannot  ex 
press  in  words  our  gratitude  to  those 
who  so  cheerfully  spend  their  time  and 
money  in  glittering  apparel  and  in  pa 
rades  for  our  entertainment. 


VALUE   OF   THE    COMMONPLACE. 


fHE  vitality  of  a  fallacy  is  incalcu 
lable.  Although  the  Drawer  has 
been  going  many  years,  there  are 
still  remaining  people  who  believe 
that  "  things  which  are  equal  to  the 
same  thing  are  equal  to  each  other." 
This  mathematical  axiom,  which  is  well 
enough  in  its  place,  has  been  extended 
into  the  field  of  morals  and  social  life, 
confused  the  perception  of  human  rela 
tions,  and  raised  "  hob,"  as  the  saying  is, 
in  political  economy.  We  theorize  and 
legislate  as  if  people  were  things.  Most 
of  the  schemes  oj  social  reorganization  are 
based  on  this  fallacy.  It  always  breaks 
down  in  experience.  A  has  two  friends, 
B  and  C  —  to  state  it  mathematically. 
A  is  equal  to  B,  and  A  is  equal  to  C.  A 
has  for  B  and  also  for  C  the  most  cor 
dial  admiration  and  affection,  and  B  and 
C  have  reciprocally  the  same  feeling  for 


1 68 


A.  Such  is  the  harmony  that  A  cannot 
tell  which  he  is  more  fond  of,  B  or  C. 
And  B  and  C  are  sure  that  A  is  the  best 
friend  of  each.  This  harmony,  however, 
is  not  triangular.  A  makes  the  mistake 
of  supposing  that  it  is — having  a  notion 
that  things  which  are  equal  to  the  same 
thing  are  equal  to  each  other — and  he 
brings  B  and  C  together.  The  result  is 
disastrous.  B  and  C  cannot  get  on  with 
each  other.  Regard  for  A  restrains  their 
animosity,  and  they  hypocritically  pre 
tend  to  like  each  other,  but  both  wonder 
what  A  finds  so  congenial  in  the  other. 
The  truth  is  that  this  personal  equation, 
as  we  call  it,  in  each  cannot  be  made  the 
subject  of  mathematical  calculation.  Hu 
man  relations  will  not  bend  to  it.  And 
yet  we  keep  blundering  along  as  if  they 
would.  We  are  always  sure,  in  our  letter 
of  introduction,  that  this  friend  will  be 
congenial  to  the  other,  because  we  are 
fond  of  both,  Sometimes  this  happens, 
but  half  the  time  we  should  be  more  suc 
cessful  in  bringing  people  into  accord  if 
we  gave  a  letter  of  introduction  to  a  per 
son  we  do  not  know,  to  be  delivered  to 


one  we  have  never  seen.  On  the  face  of 
it  this  is  as  absurd  as  it  is  for  a  politician 
to  indorse  the  application  of  a  person  he 
does  not  know  for  an  office  the  duties  of 
which  he  is  unacquainted  with  ;  but  it  is 
scarcely  less  absurd  than  the  expecta 
tion  that  men  and  women  can  be  treated 
like  mathematical  units  and  equivalents. 
Upon  the  theory  that  they  can,  rest  the 
present  grotesque  schemes  of  National 
ism. 

In  saying  all  this  the  Drawer  is  well 
aware  that  it  subjects  itself  to  the  charge 
of  being  commonplace,  but  it  is  precisely 
the  commonplace  that  this  essay  seeks  to 
defend.  Great  is  the  power  of  the  com 
monplace.  "  My  friends,"  says  the  preach 
er,  in  an  impressive  manner,  "  Alexander 
died  ;  Napoleon  died  ;  you  will  all  die  !" 
This  profound  remark, so  true,  so  thought 
ful,  creates  a  deep  sensation.  It  is  deep 
ened  by  the  statement  that  "  man  is  a 
moral  being."  The  profundity  of  such 
startling  assertions  cows  the  spirit ;  they 
appeal  to  the  universal  consciousness, 
and  we  bow  to  the  genius  that  delivers 
them.  "  How  true  !"  we  exclaim,  and  go 


170 

away  with  an  enlarged  sense  of  our  own 
capacity  for  the  comprehension  of  deep 
thought.  Our  conceit  is  flattered.  Do 
we  not  like  the  books  that  raise  us  to  the 
great  level  of  the  commonplace,  whereon 
we  move  with  a  sense  of  power?  Did 
not  Mr.  Tupper,  that  sweet,  melodious 
shepherd  of  the  undisputed,  lead  about 
vast  flocks  of  sheep  over  the  satisfying 
plain  of  mediocrity?  Was  there  ever 
a  greater  exhibition  of  power,  while  it 
lasted?  How  long  did  "The  Country 
Parson  "  feed  an  eager  world  with  rhe 
torical  statements  of  that  which  it  already 
knew?  The  thinner  this  sort  of  thing 
is  spread  out,  the  more  surface  it  covers, 
of  course.  What  is  so  captivating  and 
popular  as  a  book  of  essays  which  gathers 
together  and  arranges  a  lot  of  facts  out 
of  histories  and  cyclopaedias,  set  forth  in 
the  form  of  conversations  that  any  one 
could  have  taken  part  in  ?  Is  not  this 
book  pleasing  because  it  is  commonplace? 
And  is  this  because  we  do  not  like  to  be 
insulted  with  originality,  or  because  in 
our  experience  it  is  only  the  commonly 
accepted  which  is  true  ?  The  statesman 


or  the  poet  who  launches  out  unmindful 
of  these  conditions  will  be  likely  to  come 
to  grief  in  his  generation.  Will  not  the 
wise  novelist  seek  to  encounter  the  least 
intellectual  resistance  ? 

Should  one  take  a  cynical  view  of  man 
kind  because  he  perceives  this  great  power 
of  the  commonplace?  Not  at  all.  He 
should  recognize  and  respect  this  power. 
He  may  even  say  that  it  is  this  power 
that  makes  the  world  go  on  as  smoothly 
and  contentedly  as  it  does,  on  the  whole. 
Woe  to  us,  is  the  thought  of  Carlyle,  when 
a  thinker  is  let  loose  in  this  world  !  He 
becomes  a  cause  of  uneasiness,  and  a 
source  of  rage  very  often.  But  his  power 
is  limited.  He  filters  through  a  few 
minds,  until  gradually  his  ideas  become 
commonplace  enough  to  be  powerful. 
We  draw  our  supply  of  water  from  reser 
voirs,  not  from  torrents.  Probably  the 
man  who  first  said  that  the  line  of  recti 
tude  corresponds  with  the  line  of  enjoy 
ment  was  disliked  as  well  as  disbelieved. 
But  how  impressive  now  is  the  idea  that 
virtue  and  happiness  are  twins  ! 

Perhaps  it  is  true  that  the  common- 


172 

place  needs  no  defence,  since  everybody 
takes  it  in  as  naturally  as  milk,  and  thrives 
on  it.  Beloved  and  read  and  followed  is 
the  writer  or  the  preacher  of  common 
place.  But  is  not  the  sunshine  common, 
and  the  bloom  of  May  ?  Why  struggle 
with  these  things  in  literature  and  in  life? 
Why  not  settle  down  upon  the  formula 
that  to  be  platitudinous  is  to  be  happy? 


THE   BURDEN    OF   CHRISTMAS. 


IT  would  be  the  pity  of  the  world  to 
destroy  it,  because  it  would  be  next 
to  impossible  to  make  another  holi 
day  as  good  as  Christmas.  Perhaps  there 
is  no  danger,  but  the  American  people 
have  developed  an  unexpected  capacity 
for  destroying  things ;  they  can  destroy 
anything.  They  have  even  invented  a 
phrase  for  it  —  running  a  thing  into  the 
ground.  They  have  perfected  the  art  of 
making  so  much  of  a  thing  as  to  kill 
it ;  they  can  magnify  a  man  or  a  recrea 
tion  or  an  institution  to  death.  And 
they  do  it  with  such  a  hearty  good -will 
and  enjoyment.  Their  motto  is  that  you 
cannot  have  too  much  of  a  good  thing. 
They  have  almost  made  funerals  unpopu- 


i76 

lar  by  over-elaboration  and  display,  espe 
cially  what  are  called  public  funerals,  in 
which  an  effort  is  made  to  confer  great 
distinction  on  the  dead.  So  far  has  it 
been  carried  often  that  there  has  been  a 
reaction  of  popular  sentiment  and  people 
have  wished  the  man  were  alive.  We 
prosecute  everything  so  vigorously  that 
we  speedily  either  wear  it  out  or  wear  our 
selves  out  on  it,  whether  it  is  a  game,  or  a 
festival,  or  a  holiday.  We  can  use  up  any 
sport  or  game  ever  invented  quicker  than 
any  other  people.  We  can  practise  any 
thing,  like  a  vegetable  diet,  for  instance,  to 
an  absurd  conclusion  with  more  virn  than 
any  other  nation.  This  trait  has  its  advan 
tages  ;  nowhere  else  will  a  delusion  run  so 
fast,  and  so  soon  run  up  a  tree — another 
of  our  happy  phrases.  There  is  a  large 
ness  and  exuberance  about  us  which  run 
even  into  our  ordinary  phraseology.  The 
sympathetic  clergyman,  coming  from  the 
bedside  of  a  parishioner  dying  of  dropsy, 
says,  with  a  heavy  sigh,  "  The  poor  fellow 
is  just  swelling  away." 

Is  Christmas  swelling  away  ?    If  it  is  not, 
it  is  scarcely  our  fault.     Since  the  Ameri- 


177 

can  nation  fairly  got  hold  of  the  holiday 
— in  some  parts  of  the  country,  as  in  New 
England,  it  has  been  universal  only  about 
fifty  years — we  have  made  it  hum,  as  we 
like  to  say.  We  have  appropriated  the 
English  conviviality,  the  German  simplic 
ity,  the  Roman  pomp,  and  we  have  added 
to  it  an  element  of  expense  in  keeping  with 
our  own  greatness.  Is  anybody  beginning 
to  feel  it  a  burden,  this  sweet  festival  of 
charity  and  good-will,  and  to  look  forward 
to  it  with  apprehension  ?  Is  the  time  ap 
proaching  when  we  shall  want  to  get 
somebody  to  play  it  for  us,  like  base-ball  ? 
Anything  that  interrupts  the  ordinary 
flow  of  life,  introduces  into  it,  in  short,  a 
social  cyclone  that  upsets  everything  for 
a  fortnight,  may  in  time  be  as  hard  to  bear 
as  that  festival  of  housewives  called  house- 
cleaning,  that  riot  of  cleanliness  which 
men  fear  as  they  do  a  panic  in  business. 
Taking  into  account  the  present  prepara 
tions  for  Christmas,  and  the  time  it  takes 
to  recover  from  it,  we  are  beginning — are 
we  not  ? — to  consider  it  one  of  the  most 
serious  events  of  modern  life. 

The  Drawer  is  led  into  these  observa- 


i78 

tions  out  of  its  love  for  Christmas.  It  is 
impossible  to  conceive  of  any  holiday  that 
could  take  its  place,  nor  indeed  would  it 
seem  that  human  wit  could  invent  anoth 
er  so  adapted  to  humanity.  The  obvious 
intention  of  it  is  to  bring  together,  for  a 
season  at  least,  all  men  in  the  exercise  of 
a  common  charity  and  a  feeling  of  good 
will,  the  poor  and  the  rich,  the  successful 
and  the  unfortunate,  that  all  the  world 
may  feel  that  in  the  time  called  the  Truce 
of  God  the  thing  common  to  all  men  is 
the  best  thing  in  life.  How  will  it  suit 
this  intention,  then,  if  in  our  way  of  exag 
gerated  ostentation  of  charity  the  distinc 
tion  between  rich  and  poor  is  made  to 
appear  more  marked  than  on  ordinary 
days  ?  Blessed  are  those  that  expect 
nothing.  But  are  there  not  an  increasing 
multitude  of  persons  in  the  United  States 
who  have  the  most  exaggerated  expecta 
tions  of  personal  profit  on  Christmas  Day  ? 
Perhaps  it  is  not  quite  so  bad  as  this,  but 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  what  the  children 
alone  expect  to  receive,  in  money  value 
would  absorb  the  national  surplus,  about 
which  so  much  fuss  is  made.  There  is 


'79 

really  no  objection  to  this — the  terror  of 
the  surplus  is  a  sort  of  nightmare  in  the 
country — except  that  it  destroys  the  sim 
plicity  of  the  festival,  and  belittles  small 
offerings  that  have  their  chief  value  in  af 
fection.  And  it  points  inevitably  to  the 
creation  of  a  sort  of  Christmas  "  Trust "- 
the  modern  escape  out  of  ruinous  compe 
tition.  When  the  expense  of  our  annual 
charity  becomes  so  great  that  the  poor  are 
discouraged  from  sharing  in  it,  and  the 
rich  even  feel  it  a  burden,  there  would 
seem  to  be  no  way  but  the  establishment 
of  neighborhood  "  Trusts"  in  order  to 
equalize  both  cost  and  distribution.  Each 
family  could  buy  a  share  according  to  its 
means,  and  the  division  on  Christmas  Day 
woi'ld  create  a  universal  satisfaction  in 
profit  sharing — that  is,  the  rich  would  get 
as  much  as  the  poor,  and  the  rivalry  of 
ostentation  would  be  quieted.  Perhaps 
with  the  money  question  a  little  subdued, 
and  the  female  anxieties  of  the  festival 
allayed,  there  would  be  more  room  for  the 
development  of  that  sweet  spirit  of  broth 
erly  kindness,  or  all-embracing  charity, 
which  we  know  underlies  this  best  festival 


i8o 


of  all  the  ages.  Is  this  an  old  sermon  ? 
The  Drawer  trusts  that  it  is,  for  there  can 
be  nothing  new  in  the  preaching  of  sim 
plicity. 


THE    RESPONSIBILITY    OF 
WRITERS. 


IT  is  difficult  enough  to  keep  the  world 
straight  without  the  interposition  of  fic 
tion.  But  the  conduct  of  the  novelists 
and  the  painters  makes  the  task  of  the 
conservators  of  society  doubly  perplexing. 
Neither  the  writers  nor  the  artists  have  a 
due  sense  of  the  responsibilities  of  their 
creations.  The  trouble  appears  to  arise 
from  the  imitativeness  of  the  race.  Nat 
ure  herself  seems  readily  to  fall  into  im 
itation.  It  was  noticed  by  the  friends  of 
nature  that  when  the  peculiar  coal-tar 


1 84 

colors  were  discovered,  the  same  faded, 
aesthetic,  and  sometimes  sickly  colors  be 
gan  to  appear  in  the  ornamental  flower 
beds  and  masses  of  foliage  plants.  It 
was  hardly  fancy  that  the  flowers  took 
the  colors  of  the  ribbons  and  stuffs  of 
the  looms,  and  that  the  same  instant  nat 
ure  and  art  were  sicklied  o'er  with  the 
same  pale  hues  of  fashion. 

If  this  relation  of  nature  and  art  is  too 
subtle  for  comprehension,  there  is  noth 
ing  fanciful  in  the  influence  of  the  char 
acters  in  fiction  upon  social  manners  and 
morals.  To  convince  ourselves  of  this, 
we  do  not  need  to  recall  the  effect  of 
Werther,  of  Childe  Harold,  and  of  Don 
Juan,  and  the  imitation  of  their  sentimen 
tality,  misanthropy,  and  adventure,  down 
to  the  copying  of  the  rakishness  of  the 
loosely  -  knotted  necktie  and  the  broad 
turn-over  collar.  In  our  own  generation 
the  heroes  and  heroines  of  fiction  begin 
to  appear  in  real  life,  in  dress  and  man 
ner,  while  they  are  still  warm  from  the 
press.  The  popular  heroine  appears  on 
the  street  in  a  hundred  imitations  as  soon 
as  the  popular  mind  apprehends  her  traits 


in  the  story.  We  did  not  know  the  type 
of  woman  in  the  poems  of  the  aesthetic 
school  and  on  the  canvas  of  Rossetti — 
,the  red-haired,  wide-eyed  child  of  passion 
and  emotion,  in  lank  clothes,  enmeshed 
in  spider-webs — but  so  quickly  was  she 
multiplied  in  real  life  that  she  seemed  to 
have  stepped  from  the  book  and  the 
frame,  ready  -  made,  into  the  street  and 
the  drawing-room.  And  there  is  nothing 
wonderful  about  this.  It  is  a  truism  to 
say  that  the  genuine  creations  in  fiction 
take  their  places  in  general  apprehension 
with  historical  characters,  and  sometimes 
they  live  more  vividly  on  the  printed  page 
and  on  canvas  than  the  others  in  their 
pale,  contradictory,  and  incomplete  lives. 
The  characters  of  history  we  seldom  agree 
about,  and  are  always  reconstructing  on 
new  information  ;  but  the  characters  of 
fiction  are  subject  to  no  such  vicissitudes. 
The  importance  of  this  matter  is  hard 
ly  yet  perceived.  Indeed,  it  is  unreason 
able  that  it  should  be,  when  parents,  as 
a  rule,  have  so  slight  a  feeling  of  respon 
sibility  for  the  sort  of  children  they  bring 
into  the  world.  In  the  coming  scientific 


i86 

age  this  may  be  changed,  and  society  may 
visit  upon  a  grandmother  the  sins  of  her 
grandchildren,  recognizing  her  responsi 
bility  to  the  very  end  of  the  line.  But  it- 
is  not  strange  that  in  the  apathy  on  this 
subject  the  novelists  should  be  careless 
and  inconsiderate  as  to  the  characters 
they  produce,  either  as  ideals  or  exam 
ples.  They  know  that  the  bad  example 
is  more  likely  to  be  copied  than  to  be 
shunned,  and  that  the  low  ideal,  being 
easy  to  follow,  is  more  likely  to  be  imitat 
ed  than  the  high  ideal.  But  the  novel 
ists  have  too  little  sense  of  responsibility 
in  this  respect,  probably  from  an  inade 
quate  conception  of  their  power.  Per 
haps  the  most  harmful  sinners  are  not 
those  who  send  into  the  world  of  fiction 
the  positively  wicked  and  immoral,  but 
those  who  make  current  the  dull,  the 
commonplace,  and  the  socially  vulgar. 
For  most  readers  the  wicked  character  is 
repellent;  but  the  commonplace  raises 
less  protest,  and  is  soon  deemed  harm 
less,  while  it  is  most  demoralizing.  An 
underbred  book— that  is,  a  book  in  which 
the  underbred  characters  are  the  natural 


i87 

outcome  of  the  author's  own  mind  and 
apprehension  of  life — is  worse  than  any 
possible  epidemic  ;  for  while  the  epidemic 
may  kill  a  number  of  useless  or  vulgar 
people,  the  book  will  make  a  great  num 
ber.  The  keen  observer  must  have  no 
ticed  the  increasing  number  of  common 
place,  undiscriminating  people  of  low 
intellectual  taste  in  the  United  States. 
These  are  to  a  degree  the  result  of  the 
feeble,  underbred  literature  (so  called)  that 
is  most  hawked  about,  and  most  accessi- 
b'e,  by  cost  and  exposure,  to  the  greater 
number  of  people.  It  is  easy  to  distin 
guish  the  young  ladies  —  many  of  them 
beautifully  dressed,  and  handsome  on  first 
acquaintance  —  who  have  been  bred  on 
this  kind  of  book.  They  are  betrayed  by 
their  speech,  their  taste,  their  manners. 
Yet  there  is  a  marked  public  insensibil 
ity  about  this.  We  all  admit  that  the 
scrawny  young  woman,  anaemic  and  phys 
ically  undeveloped,  has  not  had  proper 
nourishing  food.  But  we  seldom  think 
that  the  mentally- vulgar  girl,  poverty- 
stricken  in  ideas,  has  been  starved  by  a 
thin  course  of  diet  on  anaemic  books.  The 


i83 


girls  are  not  to  blame  if  they  are  as  vapid 
and  uninteresting  as  the  ideal  girls  they 
have  been  associating  with  in  the  books 
they  have  read.  The  responsibility  is 
with  the  novelist  and  the  writer  of  sto 
ries,  the  chief  characteristic  of  which  is 
vulgar  commonplace. 

Probably  when  the  Great  Assize  is  held 
one  of  the  questions  asked  will  be,  "  Did 
you,  in  America,  ever  write  stories  for 
children  ?"  What  a  quaking  of  knees 
there  will  be !  For  there  will  stand  the 
victims  of  this  sort  of  literature,  who  be 
gan  in  their  tender  years  to  enfeeble  their 
minds  with  the  wishy-washy  flood  of  com 
monplace  prepared  for  them  by  dull  writ 
ers  and  commercial  publishers,  and  con 
tinued  on  in  those  so-called  domestic 
stories  (as  if  domestic  meant  idiotic)  un 
til  their  minds  were  diluted  to  that  degree 
that  they  could  not  act  upon  anything 
that  offered  the  least  resistance.  Begin 
ning  with  the  pepsinized  books,  they  must 
continue  with  them,  and  the  dull  appe 
tite  by-and-by  must  be  stimulated  with  a 
spice  of  vulgarity  or  a  little  pepper  of 
impropriety.  And  fortunately  for  their 


i89 

nourishment  in  this  kind,  the  dullest  writ 
ers  can  be  indecent. 

Unfortunately  the  world  is  so  ordered 
that  the  person  of  the  feeblest  constitu 
tion  can  communicate  a  contagious  dis 
ease.  And  these  people,  bred  on  this  pab 
ulum,  in  turn  make  books.  If  one,  it  is 
now  admitted,  can  do  nothing  else  in  this 
world,  he  can  write,  and  so  the  evil  wi 
dens  and  widens.  No  art  is  required,  nor 
any  selection,  nor  any  ideality,  only  ca 
pacity  for  increasing  the  vacuous  com 
monplace  in  life.  A  princess  born  may 
have  this,  or  the  leader  of  cotillons.  Yet 
in  the  Judgment  the  responsibility  will 
rest  upon  the  writers  who  set  the  copy. 


THE   CAP   AND    GOWN. 


ONE  of  the  burning  questions  now  in 
the  colleges  for  the  higher  education  of 
women  is  whether  the  undergraduates 
shall  wear  the  cap  and  gown.  The 
subject  is  a  delicate  one,  and  should 
not  be  confused  with  the  broader  one, 
what  is  the  purpose  of  the  higher  ed 
ucation  ?  Some  hold  that  the  purpose 
is  to  enable  a  woman  to  dispense  with 

13 


194 

marriage,  while  others  maintain  that  it 
is  to  fit  a  woman  for  the  higher  duties 
of  the  married  life.  The  latter  opinion 
will  probably  prevail,  for  it  has  nature  on 
its  side,  and  the  course  of  history,  and  the 
imagination.  But  meantime  the  point  of 
education  is  conceded,  and  whether  a  girl 
is  to  educate  herself  into  single  or  double 
blessedness  need  not  interfere  with  the 
consideration  of  the  habit  she  is  to  wear 
during  her  college  life.  That  is  to  be  de 
termined  by  weighing  a  variety  of  reasons. 
Not  the  least  of  these  is  the  considera 
tion  whether  the  cap-and-gown  habit  is 
becoming.  If  it  is  not  becoming,  it  will 
not  go,  not  even  by  an  amendment  to  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States ;  for 
woman's  dress  obeys  always  the  higher 
law.  Masculine  opinion  is  of  no  value  on 
this  point,  and  the  Drawer  is  aware  of  the 
fact  that  if  it  thinks  the  cap  and  gown  be 
coming,  it  may  imperil  the  cap-and-gown 
cause  to  say  so ;  but  the  cold  truth  is  that 
the  habit  gives  a  plain  girl  distinction,  and 
a  handsome  girl  gives  the  habit  distinc 
tion.  So  that,  aside  from  the  mysterious 
working  of  feminine  motive,  which  makes 


woman  a  law  unto  herself,  there  should  be 
practical  unanimity  in  regard  to  this  habit. 
There  is  in  the  cap  and  gown  a  subtle 
suggestion  of  the  union  of  learning  with 
womanly  charm  that  is  very  captivating 
to  the  imagination.  On  the  other  hand, 
all  this  n  ay  go  for  nothing  with  the  girl 
herself,  who  is  conscious  of  the  possession 
of  quite  other  powers  and  attractions  in 
a  varied  and  constantly  changing  toilet, 
which  can  reflect  her  moods  from  hour  to 
hour.  So  that  if  it  is  admitted  that  this 
habit  is  almost  universally  becoming  to 
day,  it  might,  in  the  inscrutable  depths 
of  the  feminine  nature — the  something 
that  education  never  can  and  never  should 
change — be  irksome  to-morrow,  and  we 
can  hardly  imagine  what  a  blight  to  a 
young  spirit  there  might  be  in  three  hun 
dred  and  sixty-five  days  of  uniformity. 

The  devotees  of  the  higher  education 
will  perhaps  need  to  approach  the  sub 
ject  from  another  point  of  view — namely, 
what  they  are  willing  to  surrender  in  or 
der  to  come  into  a  distinctly  scholastic 
influence.  The  cap  and  gown  are  scho 
lastic  emblems.  Primarily  they  marked 


1 96 

the  student,  and  not  alliance  with  any 
creed  or  vows  to  any  religious  order. 
They  belong  to  the  universities  of  learn 
ing,  and  to-day  they  have  no  more  eccle 
siastic  meaning  than  do  the  gorgeous 
robes  of  the  Oxford  chancellor  and  vice- 
chancellor  and  the  scarlet  hood.  From 
the  scholarly  side,  then,  if  not  from  the 
dress  side,  there  is  much  to  be  said  for 
the  cap  and  gown.  They  are  badges  of 
devotion,  for  the  time  being,  to  an  intel 
lectual  life.  They  help  the  mind  in  its 
effort  to  set  itself  apart  to  unworldly  pur 
suits  ;  they  are  indications  of  separateness 
from  the  prevailing  fashions  and  frivoli 
ties.  The  girl  who  puts  on  the  cap  and 
gown  devotes  herself  to  the  society  which 
is  avowedly  in  pursuit  of  a  larger  intel 
lectual  sympathy  and  a  wider  intellectual 
life.  The  enduring  of  this  habit  will  have 
a  confirming  influence  on  her  purposes, 
and  help  to  keep  her  up  to  them.  It  is 
like  the  uniform  to  the  soldier  or  the  veil 
to  the  nun — a  sign  of  separation  and  de 
votion.  It  is  difficult  in  this  age  to  keep 
any  historic  consciousness,  any  proper  re 
lations  to  the  past.  In  the  cap  and  gown 


i97 

the  girl  will  at  least  feel  that  she  is  in  the 
line  of  the  traditions  of  pure  learning. 
And  there  is  also  something  of  order  and 
discipline  in  the  uniforming  of  a  commu 
nity  set  apart  for  an  unworldly  purpose. 
Is  it  believed  that  three  or  four  years  of 
the  kind  of  separateness  marked  by  this 
habit  in  the  life  of  a  girl  will  rob  her  of 
any  desirable  womanly  quality  ? 

The  cap  and  gown  are  only  an  empha 
sis  of  the  purpose  to  devote  a  certain  pe 
riod  to  the  higher  life,  and  if  they  cannot 
be  defended,  then  we  may  begin  to  be 
sceptical  about  the  seriousness  of  the  in 
tention  of  a  higher  education.  If  the 
school  is  merely  a  method  of  passing  the 
time  until  a  certain  event  in  the  girl's 
life,  she  had  better  dress  as  if  that  event 
were  the  only  one  worth  considering. 
But  if  she  wishes  to  fit  herself  for  the 
best  married  life,  she  may  not  disdain  the 
help  of  the  cap  and  gown  in  devoting 
herself  to  the  highest  culture.  Of  course 
education  has  its  dangers,  and  the  regalia 
of  scholarship  may  increase  them.  While 
our  cap-and-gown  divinity  is  walking  in 
the  groves  of  Academia,  apart  from  the 


198 


ways  of  men,  her  sisters  outside  may  be 
dancing  and  dressing  into  the  affections 
of  the  marriageable  men.  But  this  is  not 
the  worst  of  it.  The  university  girl  may 
be  educating  herself  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  ordinary  possible  husband.  But 
this  will  carry  its  own  cure.  The  educat 
ed  girl  will  be  so  much  more  attractive 
in  the  long-run,  will  have  so  many  more 
resources  for  making  a  life  companion 
ship  agreeable,  that  she  will  be  more  and 
more  in  demand.  And  the  young  men, 
even  those  not  expecting  to  take  up  a 
learned  profession,  will  see  the  advantage 
of  educating  themselves  up  to  the  cap- 
and-gown  level.  We  know  that  it  is  the 
office  of  the  university  to  raise  the  stand 
ard  of  the  college,  and  of  the  college  to 
raise  the  standard  of  the  high  school.  It 
will  be  the  inevitable  result  that  these 
young  ladies,  setting  themselves  apart  for 
a  period  to  the  intellectual  life,  will  raise 
the  standard  of  the  young  men,  and  of 
married  life  generally.  And  there  is  noth 
ing  supercilious  in  the  invitation  of  the 
cap-and-gown  brigade  to  the  young  men 
to  come  up  higher. 


1 90 

There  is  one  humiliating  objection 
made  to  the  cap  and  gown  —  made  by 
members  of  the  gentle  sex  themselves — 
which  cannot  be  passed  by.  It  is  of  such 
a  delicate  nature,  and  involves  such  a  dis 
paragement  of  the  sex  in  a  vital  point, 
that  the  Drawer  hesitates  to  put  it  in 
words.  It  is  said  that  the  cap  and  gown 
will  be  used  to  cover  untidiness,  to  con 
ceal  the  makeshift  of  a  disorderly  and 
unsightly  toilet.  Undoubtedly  the  cap 
and  gown  are  democratic,  adopted  prob 
ably  to  equalize  the  appearance  of  rich 
and  poor  in  the  same  institution,  where 
all  are  on  an  intellectual  level.  Perhaps 
the  sex  is  not  perfect ;  it  may  be  that 
there  are  slovens  (it  is  a  brutal  word)  in 
that  sex  which  is  our  poetic  image  of  pu 
rity.  But  a  neat  and  self-respecting  girl 
will  no  more  be  slovenly  under  a  scholas 
tic  gown  than  under  any  outward  finery. 
If  it  is  true  that  the  sex  would  take  cov 
er  in  this  way,  and  is  liable  to  run  down 
at  the  heel  when  it  has  a  chance,  then  to 
the  "  examination  "  will  have  to  be  added 
a  periodic  "  inspection,"  such  as  the  West- 
Pointers  submit  to  in  regard  to  their  uni- 


forms.  For  the  real  idea  of  the  cap  and 
gown  is  to  encourage  discipline,  order, 
and  neatness.  We  fancy  that  it  is  the 
mission  of  woman  in  this  generation  to 
show  the  world  that  the  tendency  of  wom 
en  to  an  intellectual  life  is  not,  as  it  used 
to  be  said  it  was,  to  untidy  habits. 


»'.,  I 


A   TENDENCY   OF   THE   AGE. 


FIIS  ingenious  age,  when 
studied,  seems  not  less  re 
markable  for  its  division  of 
labor  than  for  the  disposition  of  people 
to  shift  labor  on  to  other's  shoulders. 
Perhaps  it  is  only  another  aspect  of  the 
spirit  of  altruism,  a  sort  of  backhanded 
vicariousness.  In  taking  an  inventory  of 
tendencies,  this  demands  some  attention. 
The  notion  appears  to  be  spreading  that 
there  must  be  some  way  by  which  one 
can  get  a  good  intellectual  outfit  without 


204 


much  personal  effort.  There  are  many 
schemes  of  education  which  encourage 
this  idea.  If  one  could  only  hit  upon 
the  right  "  electives,"  he  could  become  a 
scholar  with  very  little  study,  and  with 
out  grappling  with  any  of  the  real  diffi 
culties  in  the  way  of  an  education.  It  is 
not  more  a  short-cut  we  desire,  but  a  road 
of  easy  grades,  with  a  locomotive  that  will 
pull  our  train  along  while  we  sit  in  a  pal 
ace-car  at  ease.  The  discipline  to  be  ob 
tained  by  tackling  an  obstacle  and  over 
coming  it  we  think  of  small  value.  There 
must  be  some  way  of  attaining  the  end  of 
cultivation  without  much  labor.  We  take 
readily  to  proprietary  medicines.  It  is 
easier  to  dose  with  these  than  to  exercise 
ordinary  prudence  about  our  health.  And 
we  readily  believe  the  doctors  of  learning 
when  they  assure  us  that  we  can  acquire 
a  new  language  by  the  same  method  by 
which  we  can  restore  bodily  vigor :  take 
one  small  patent-right  volume  in  six  easy 
lessons,  without  even  the  necessity  of 
"  shaking,"  and  without  a  regular  doctor, 
and  we  shall  know  the  language.  Some 
one  else  has  done  all  the  work  for  us,  and 


205 

we  only  need  to  absorb.  It  is  pleasing  to 
see  how  this  theory  is  getting  to  be  uni 
versally  applied.  All  knowledge  can  be 
put  into  a  kind  of  pemican,  so  that  we  can 
have  it  condensed.  Everything  must  be 
chopped  up,  epitomized,  put  in  short  sen 
tences,  and  italicized.  And  we  have  prim 
ers  for  science,  for  history,  so  that  we  can 
acquire  all  the  information  we  need  in  this 
world  in  a  few  hasty  bites.  It  is  an  ad 
mirable  saving  of  time  —  saving  of  time 
being  more  important  in  this  generation 
than  the  saving  of  ourselves. 

And  the  age  is  so  intellectually  active, 
so  eager  to  know !  If  we  wish  to  know 
anything,  instead  of  digging  for  it  our 
selves,  it  is  much  easier  to  flock  all  togeth 
er  to  some  lecturer  who  has  put  all  the  re 
sults  into  an  hour,  and  perhaps  can  throw 
them  all  upon  a  screen,  so  that  we  can  ac 
quire  all  we  want  by  merely  ucing  the  eyes, 
and  bothering  ourselves  little  about  what 
is  said.  Reading  itself  is  almost  too  much 
of  an  effort.  We  hire  people  to  read  for 
us — to  interpret,  as  we  call  it — Browning 
and  Ibsen,  even  Wagner.  Every  one  is 
familiar  with  the  pleasure  and  profit  of 


206 


"recitations,"  of  "conversations"  which 
are  monologues.  There  is  something  fas 
cinating  in  the  scheme  of  getting  others 
to  do  our  intellectual  labor  for  us,  to  at 
tempt  to  fill  up  our  minds  as  if  they  were 
jars.  The  need  of  the  mind  for  nutriment 
is  like  the  need  of  the  body,  but  our  the 
ory  is  that  it  can  be  satisfied  in  a  differ 
ent  way.  There  was  an  old  belief  that  in 
order  that  we  should  enjoy  food,  and  that 
it  should  perform  its  function  of  assimi 
lation,  we  must  work  for  it,  and  that  the 
exertion  needed  to  earn  it  brought  the 
appetite  that  made  it  profitable  to  the 
system.  We  still  have  the  idea  that  we 
must  eat  for  ourselves,  and  that  we  cannot 
delegate  this  performance,  as  we  do  the 
filling  of  the  mind,  to  some  one  else.  We 
may  have  ceased  to  relish  the  act  of  eat 
ing,  as  we  have  ceased  to  relish  the  act 
of  studying,  but  we  cannot  yet  delegate 
it,  even  although  our  power  of  digesting 
food  for  the  body  has  become  almost  as 
feeble  as  the  power  of  acquiring  and  di 
gesting  food  for  the  mind. 

It  is  beautiful  to  witness  our  reliance 
upon  others.     The  house  may  be  full  of 


207 


books,  the  libraries  may  be  as  free  and  as 
unstrained  of  impurities  as  city  water;  but 
if  we  wish  to  read  anything  or  study  any 
thing  we  resort  to  a  club.  We  gather  to 
gether  a  number  of  persons  of  like  capac 
ity  with  ourselves.  A  subject  which  we 
might  grapple  with  and  run  down  by  a 
few  hours  of  vigorous,  absorbed  attention 
in  a  library,  gaining  strength  of  mind  by 
resolute  encountering  of  difficulties,  by 
personal  effort,  we  sit  around  for  a  month 
or  a  season  in  a  club,  expecting  somehow 
to  take  the  information  by  effortless  con 
tiguity  with  it.  A  book  which  we  could 
master  and  possess  in  an  evening  we  can 
have  read  to  us  in  a  month  in  the  club, 
without  the  least  intellectual  effort.  Is 
there  nothing,  then,  in  the  exchange  of 
ideas  ?  Oh  yes,  when  there  are  ideas  to 
exchange.  Is  there  nothing  stimulating 
in  the  conflict  of  mind  with  mind  ?  Oh 
yes,  when  there  is  any  mind  for  a  conflict. 
But  the  mind  does  not  grow  without  per 
sonal  effort  and  conflict  and  struggle  with 
itself.  It  is  a  living  organism,  and  not  at 
all  like  a  jar  or  other  receptacle  for  fluids. 
The  physiologists  say  that  what  we  eat 


208 

will  not  do  us  much  good  unless  we  chew 
it.  By  analogy  we  may  presume  that  the 
mind  is  not  greatly  benefited  by  what  it 
gets  without  considerable  exercise  of  the 
mind. 

Still,  it  is  a  beautiful  theory  that  we  can 
get  others  to  do  our  reading  and  thinking, 
and  stuff  our  minds  for  us.  It  may  be 
that  psychology  will  yet  show  us  how  a 
congregate  education  by  clubs  may  be  the 
way.  But  just  now  the  method  is  a  little 
crude,  and  lays  us  open  to  the  charge — 
which  every  intelligent  person  of  this 
scientific  age  will  repudiate — of  being  con 
tent  with  the  superficial ;  for  instance,  of 
trusting  wholly  to  others  for  our  immor 
tal  furnishing,  as  many  are  satisfied  with 
the  review  of  a  book  for  the  book  itself, 
or — a  refinement  on  that — with  a  review 
of  the  reviews.  The  method  is  still  crude. 
Perhaps  we  may  expect  a  further  devel 
opment  of  the  "  slot "  machine.  By  drop 
ping  a  cent  in  the  slot  one  can  get  his 
weight,  his  age,  a  piece  of  chewing-gum,  a 
bit  of  candy,  or  a  shock  that  will  energize 
his  nervous  system.  Why  not  get  from  a 
similar  machine  a  "  good  business  educa- 


tion,"  or  an  "  interpretation"  of  Browning, 
or  a  new  language,  or  a  knowledge  of 
English  literature  ?  But  even  this  would 
be  crude.  We  have  hopes  of  something 
from  electricity.  There  ought  to  be  some 
where  a  reservoir  of  knowledge,  connect 
ed  by  wires  with  every  house,  and  a  pro 
fessional  s.witch  -  tender,  who,  upon  the 
pressure  of  a  button  in  any  house,  could 
turn  on  the  intellectual  stream  desired. 
There  must  be  discovered  in  time  a  meth 
od  by  which  not  only  information  but 
intellectual  life  can  be  infused  into  the 
system  by  an  electric  current.  It  would 
save  a  world  of  trouble  and  expense.  For 
some  clubs  even  are  a  weariness,  and  it 
costs  money  to  hire  other  people  to  read 
and  think  for  us. 


A    LOCOED 

NOVELIST. 


EITHER  we  have  been  indulging  in  an 
expensive  mistake,  or  a  great  foreign  nov 
elist  who  preaches  the  gospel  of  despair 
is  locoed. 

This  word,  which  may  be  new  to  most 
of  our  readers,  has  long  been  current  in 
the  Far  West,  and  is  likely  to  be  adopted 
into  the  language,  and  become  as  indis 
pensable  as  the  typic  words  taboo  and  ta 
booed,  which  Herman  Melville  gave  us 
some  forty  years  ago.  There  grows  upon 


2I4 

the  deserts  and  the  cattle  ranges  of  the 
Rockies  a  slender  plant  of  the  lobelia  fam 
ily,  with  a  purple  blossom,  which  is  called 
the  loco.  It  is  sweet  to  the  taste  ;  horses 
and  cattle  are  fond  of  it,  and  when  they 
have  once  eaten  it  they  prefer  it  to  any 
thing  else,  and  often  refuse  other  food. 
But  the  plant  is  poisonous,  or,  rather,  to 
speak  exactly,  it  is  a  weed  of  insanity.  Its 
effect  upon  the  horse  seems  to  be  mental 
quite  as  much  as  physical.  He  behaves 
queerly,  he  is  full  of  whims ;  one  would  say 
he  was  "  possessed."  He  takes  freaks,  he 
trembles,  he  will  not  go  in  certain  places, 
he  will  not  pull  straight,  his  mind  is  evi 
dently  affected,  he  is  mildly  insane.  In 
point  of  fact,  he  is  ruined  ;  that  is  to  say, 
he  is  locoed.  Further  indulgence  in  the 
plant  results  in  death,  but  rarely  does  an 
animal  recover  from  even  one  eating  of 
the  insane  weed. 

The  shepherd  on  the  great  sheep  ranges 
leads  an  absolutely  isolated  life.  For 
weeks,  sometimes  for  months  together,  he 
does  not  see  a  human  being.  His  only 
companions  are  his  dogs  and  the  three  or 
four  thousand  sheep  he  is  herding.  ^.11 


day  long,  under  the  burning  sun,  he  fol 
lows  the  herd  over  the  rainless  prairie,  as 
it  nibbles  here  and  there  the  short  grass 
and  slowly  gathers  its  food.  At  night  he 
drives  the  sheep  back  to  the  corral,  and 
lies  down  alone  in  his  hut.  He  speaks  to 
no  one ;  he  almost  forgets  how  to  speak. 
Day  and  night  he  hears  no  sound  except 
the  melancholy,  monotonous  bleat,  bleat 
of  the  sheep.  It  becomes  intolerable. 
The  animal  stupidity  of  the  herd  enters 
into  him.  Gradually  he  loses  his  mind. 
They  say  that  he  is  locoed.  The  insane 
asylums  of  California  contain  many  shep 
herds. 

But  the  word  locoed  has  come  to  have 
a  wider  application  than  to  the  poor  shep 
herds  or  the  horses  and  cattle  that  have 
eaten  the  loco.  Any  one  who  acts  queerly, 
talks  strangely,  is  visionary  without  being 
actually  a  lunatic,  who  is  what  would  be 
called  elsewhere  a  "crank,"  is  said  to  be 
locoed.  It  is  a  term  describing  a  shade  of 
mental  obliquity  and  queerness  something 
short  of  irresponsible  madness,  and  some 
thing  more  than  temporarily  "  rattled"  or 
bewildered  for  the  moment.  It  is  a  good 


2l6 

word,  and  needed  to  apply  to  many  people 
who  have  gone  off  into  strange  ways,  and 
behave  as  .if  they  had  eaten  some  insane 
plant — the  insane  plant  being  probably  a 
theory  in  the  mazes  of  which  they  have 
wandered  until  they  are  lost. 

Perhaps  the  loco  does  not  grow  in  Rus 
sia,  and  the  Prophet  of  Discouragement 
may  never  have  eaten  of  it ;  perhaps  he  is 
only  like  the  shepherd,  mainly  withdrawn 
from  human  intercourse  and  sympathy  in 
a  morbid  mental  isolation,  hearing  only 
the  bleat,  bleat,  bleat  of  the  muzhiks  in  the 
dulness  of  the  steppes,  wandering  round 
in  his  own  sated  mind  until  he  has  lost  all 
clew  to  life,  Whatever  the  cause  may  be, 
clearly  he  is  locoed.  All  his  theories  have 
worked  out  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
world  is  a  gigantic  mistake,  love  is  noth 
ing  but  animality,  marriage  is  immorali 
ty ;  according  to  astronomical  calculations 
this  teeming  globe  and  all  its  life  must  end 
some  time  ;  and  why  not  now  ?  There 
shall  be  no  more  marriage,  no  more  chil 
dren  ;  the  present  population  shall  wind  up 
its  affairs  with  decent  haste,  and  one  by 
one  quit  the  scene  of  their  failure,  and 


avoid  all  the  worry  of  a  useless  strug 
gle. 

This  gospel  of  the  blessedness  of  ex 
tinction  has  come  too  late  to  enable  us 
to  profit  by  it  in  our  decennial  enumera 
tion.  How  different  the  census  would 
have  been  if  taken  in  the  spirit  of  this  new 
light  !  How  much  bitterness,  how  much 
hateful  rivalry  would  have  been  spared  ! 
We  should  then  have  desired  a  reduction 
of  the  population,  not  an  increase  of  it. 
There  would  have  been  a  pious  rivalry 
among  all  the  towns  and  cities  on  the  way 
to  the  millennium  of  extinction  to  show 
the  least  number  of  inhabitants ;  and  those 
towns  would  have  been  happiest  which 
could  exhibit  not  only  a  marked  decline 
in  numbers,  but  the  greater  number  of  old 
people.  Beautiful  St.  Paul  would  have 
held  a  thanksgiving  service,  and  invited 
the  Minneapolis  enumerators  to  the  feast. 
Kansas  City  and  St.  Louis  and  San  Fran 
cisco,  and  a  hundred  other  places,  would 
not  have  desired  a  recount,  except,  per 
haps,  for  overestimate  ;  they  would  not 
have  said  that  thousands  were  away  at  the 
sea  or  in  the  mountains,  but,  on  the  con- 


2X8 


trary,  that  thousands  who  did  not  belong 
there,  attracted  by  the  salubrity  of  the  cli 
mate,  and  the  desire  to  injure  the  town's 
reputation,  had  crowded  in  there  in  cen 
sus  time.  The  newspapers,  instead  of  call 
ing  on  people  to  send  in  the  names  of  the 
unenumerated,  would  have  rejoiced  at  the 
small  returns,  as  they  would  have  done  if 
the  census  had  been  for  the  purpose  of 
levying  the  federal  tax  upon  each  place  ac 
cording  to  its  population.  Chicago — well, 
perhaps  the  Prophet  of  the  Steppes  would 
have  made  an  exception  of  Chicago,  and 
been  cynically  delighted  to  push  it  on  its 
way  of  increase,  aggregation,  and  ruin. 

But  instead  of  this,  the  strain  of  anxie 
ty  was  universal  and  heart-rending.  So 
much  depended  upon  swelling  the  figures. 
The  tension  would  have  been  relieved  if 
our  faces  were  all  set  towards  extinction, 
and  the  speedy  evacuation  of  this  unsatis 
factory  globe.  The  writer  met  recently, 
in  the  Colorado  desert  of  Arizona,  a  for 
lorn  census-taker  who  had  been  six  weeks 
in  the  saddle,  roaming  over  the  alkali 
plains  in  order  to  gratify  the  vanity  of  Un 
cle  Sam.  He  had  lost  his  reckoning,  and 


did  not  know  the  day  of  the  week  or  of 
the  month.  In  all  the  vast  territory,  away 
up  to  the  Utah  line,  over  which  he  had 
wandered, he  met  human  beings(excluding 
"  Indians  and  others  not  taxed")  so  rarely 
that  he  was  in  danger  of  being  locoed.  He 
was  almost  in  despair  when,  two  days  be 
fore,  he  had  a  windfall,  which  raised  his 
general  average,  in  the  form  of  a  woman 
with  twenty-six  children,  and  he  was  re 
joicing  that  he  should  be  able  to  turn  in 
one  hundred  and  fifty  people.  Alas,  the 
revenue  the  government  will  derive  from 
these  half-nomads  will  never  pay  the  cost 
of  enumerating  them. 

And,  alas  again,  whatever  good  show 
ing  we  may  make,  we  shall  wish  it  were 
larger;  the  more  people  we  have  the  more 
we  shall  want.  In  this  direction  there  is 
no  end,  any  more  than  there  is  to  life.  If 
extinction,  and  not  life  and  growth,  is  the 
better  rule,  what  a  costly  mistake  we  have 
been  making ! 


•\ 


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